LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Shelf 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






1tt,vi 



THE 
THEOLOGY OF CHRIST 



THE 



THEOLOGY OF CHRIST, 



FROM HIS OWN WORDS. 



A Deo docetur, Deum docet, et ad Deum ducit.— Thomas Aquinas. 



By JOSEPH P, THOMPSON, D.D., LL.D. 

PORSIEKLY PASTOR OP BROADWAY TABERNACLE, NEW YORK CITY. 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION, 
By WILLIAM M. TAYLOR, D.D., LLJGL 




NEW YORK : ^^^Opwash^ 
E B. TREAT, 757 BROADWAY, 

OFFICE OF "THE PULPIT TREASURY." 

1885. 

PRICE $1.50. 



\ 






v ««^ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by 

CHARLES SCKIBNER & CO., 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at "Washington. 



Copyright, By E. B. Treat, 1884. 






PREFACE. 



Eecent discussions of Christianity as a Faith 
have revolved about Christ as a Person ; and the 
Life of Christ, that formerly was shaped into biog- 
raphy for the instruction of the young and the 
edification of the devout, has become an effective 
weapon of theological polemics. But while within 
the sphere of theology this new significance has 
been given to the Life of Christ, the Theology of 
Christ Himself has hardly received the distinction 
due to it as the formative power in the Christian 
system both as to faith and to practice. The doc- 
trine of Christ was of the very essence of His life, 
and constitutes the true and vital Christianity. 
" I am the light of the world ; he that followeth Me 
shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light 
of lifer 

This book does not attempt to delineate the life 
of Christ, but to evolve, directly and exclusively from 
His own words, the Doctrine that He taught. The- 
ology has been too much the name of speculative 
systems, the product of philosophy applied to the 
Scriptures, or of some spiritual experience evolved 
from an individual soul and then supplemented 
from the Scriptures. But in the teaching of Christ, 



IV 



PEEFACE. 



theology is declarative in its form, and directly 
practical in its intent. He sets forth the truth of 
God, and all things spiritual and divine, with a spe- 
cific cast of doctrine, and a subjective relation of 
system, yet without the formulas of logic or the 
definitions of philosophy. Hence a truly Christian 
theology must be derived from the interpretation 
of His words by the laws of exegesis, and the colla- 
tion of detached sayings in their relations to the 
whole course of His teaching. This has been 
attempted in the volume which is here given to 
the public. 

It is no easy task to withdraw one's mind from 
the phrases and methods of theology with which 
it has long been familiar, and to concentrate it upon 
the interpretation of words spoken eighteen centu- 
ries ago ; it is as difficult at least as to extract from 
Plato and Xenophon the pure words of Socrates, 
and to hold these apart from all later speculations, 
for independent investigation. This, however, the 
author has sought to do ; and he hopes that his 
book will be found as free from any unconscious 
bias of preconceived opinions or beliefs, as it is 
from the terminology of any theological system or 
school. 

It is believed that such a development of the 
Theology of Christ as is here attempted is new in 
English literature : and only within a recent period 
has Germany, so prolific in every form of Biblical 
and Theological criticism, produced anything in 
this distinct department of Christian science. 



PREFACE. V 

Among the most important of these recent works 
are Dr. F. C. Baur, Vorlesungen ilber N. T. Theo- 
logie — a work conceived in the spirit of the Tubin- 
gen school of criticism; Drs. Schmid and Weizacker, 
Bib. Theologie des Neuen Testaments; Dr. B. Weiss, 
Lehrbuch tier blbllsclien Theologie des Neuen Testa- 
ments : and Dr. J. J. Yan Oosterzee, Die Theologie 
des Neuen Testaments, translated from the Dutch. 
A particular account of the last two works will be 
found in the Appendix. There are also isolated 
comments and discussions upon the doctrines of 
Christ in several of the recent works upon His life. 

The author has assumed the genuineness of the 
Gospel of St. John. This has not been done, how- 
ever, without a careful study of the controversy 
touching the fourth Gospel; and the reader who 
cares to investigate that question will find mate- 
rials in the Appendix. 

It is hoped that this treatise will commend itself 
to the Faith and Charity of the universal Church ; 
and also that it will find a specific use as a text- 
book for Bible Classes, and for classes in. the English 
course in Theological Seminaries. 

With the prayer that it may guide and help 
some in the knowledge of the Truth as declared by 
" the Teacher come from God," it is humbly offered 
unto the Head of the Church, as the fruit of years 
of study in His Word. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



One of the most wholesome and hopeful signs of our 
times, is the reaction which has set in among us in the 
direction of Biblical Theology. Instead of beginning 
with a strictly formulated system, and proceeding to bring 
every thing contained in the Scriptures in support of 
that, students now are taking the much more philosoph- 
ical and scientific method of examining the Scriptures 
first, and seeking to deduce from them the doctrines 
which they teach. Thus Systematic Theology becomes 
the result at which Biblical Theology arrives, instead of 
the guide under whose leadership the study of the Scrip- 
tures is to be prosecuted. In saying this we do not mean 
to depreciate Systematic Theology in its proper place, 
but rather, by putting it into that place, to give it accuracy 
and completeness. There is a System of Theology in 
the Bible, but it is there as astronomy is in the stars, or 
botany in the plants, or geology in the rocks. God is 
not in his word, any more than in his works, the author 
of confusion, but of order ; but he has left it to man to 
discover and display that order for himself; and just as 
in Science the true method is the inductive, which first 
examines, verifies, and arranges facts, and then deduces 
from them the inferences which they warrant ; so in The- 
ology the true system is to be reached through the in- 
ductive study of the Scriptures, whereby their statements 
are collected, examined, interpreted and arranged, and the 
net results are formulated as doctrines properly so called. 

[vii] 



Vlll PREFACE. 

The mere systematizer is always under the temptation 
of trying to have Scripture on the side of his system ; 
but the Biblical Theologian is most anxious to have his 
system on the side of, or in harmony with the Scriptures. 
The one is apt to deal with isolated passages, which he 
quotes in support of his system ; the other seeks to bring 
together all that the Bible contains on the matter in 
hand, and then to find a result which shall express the 
sum of their teaching. The one is prone to be most 
anxious about the logical connection of the different 
parts of his system with each other ; the other is most 
eager to state with precision the sense of Scripture teach- 
ing on the subject, and leaves the harmonizing of that 
with other matters very largely out of the account, 
believing that as in science there is no arguing against a 
fact, so in theology there is no evading a plain, unmis- 
takable and undeniable statement of the word of God. 

Of these two methods, the Inductive is decidedly 
the right one, and we may rely upon it that by its pros- 
ecution in a reverent and prayerful spirit we shall reach 
the surest and most satisfactory system. "We are not in- 
sensible indeed to the value of already existing systems. 
Some of the framers of these pursued the very method 
which we now commend ; and their works will never 
cease to be of service to the Christian Church. But each 
generation must follow their example for itself ; and in- 
stead of resting contentedly in what others have accom- 
plished, must go to the fountain-head for its own satis- 
faction and conviction. Whether anything new may be 
discovered in the process, may be a fair question for 
difference of opinion ; but there can be no doubt that the 
very examination will result in deepening faith, and 
stamping with the characteristics of the age the system 
which is the out-come of the independent investigation. 
The Bible is always the same, but there is always newness 



PREFACE. IX 

in the times, arid each era has its "present truth " in the 
light of which all others come to be read and readjusted. 
As the charities of one age do not meet the necessi- 
ties of another, but each generation has to make for 
itself its own application of the precept " thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself ;" so the theology of one century 
will not precisely meet the exigencies of another, but 
each has to go back anew, and study in the light of its 
own requirements those sacred books which are the 
standards for all time, for doctrine, for reproof, for cor- 
rection and for instruction in righteousness. Thus we 
keep clear of the danger of losing the substance of truth 
in the maintenance of a stereotyped phraseology, which, 
though full of richest significance when first employed, 
is apt, by the very frequency of its use as a watch-word, 
to degenerate into a mere parrot-cry, out of which all 
meaning has dropped. 

For the prosecution of such inductive investigation of 
the scriptures, many qualities are needed. There must 
be competent scholarship to give a correct exegesis of the' 
Scriptures themselves ; perfect candor to complete the 
examination, including nothing that does not fairly be- 
long to it, and excluding nothing that rightfully bears 
upon it ; and strict integrity to draw only such inferences 
as are fairly warranted by the premises, rejecting all mere 
matters of speculation, and all hypotheses that cannot, in 
the very nature of things, be verified. The Biblical The- 
ologian must hold himself with unswerving loyalty to the 
Scriptures, and must be ready to bow implicitly to their 
authority. If anything is not treated of by the sacred 
writers, concerning that, he, too, must be silent ; and no 
preconceived opinions, whether they be drawn from an 
imagined " Christian consciousness," or from mere indi- 
vidual preference must be allowed to weigh in the least 
degree against the words of the Bible fairly and honestly 



X P KEF ACE. 

interpreted. But given these qualities, then we may 
expect that the result will be Biblical, and in that, all 
lovers of the Bible's Author will be prepared to ac- 
quiesce. 

In the " Theology of Christ " which we have been asked 
to introduce to Biblical readers, theological students and 
ministers of these days, we have one of the earliest, and 
still one of the best, specimens of this Biblical Induction 
which have been produced in our language. For such a 
work my distinguished predecessor in the Broadway Tab- 
ernacle possessed, in a high degree, all the qualities 
which have just been enumerated. He has in this book 
confined his range to the sayings of the Lord Himself, 
not because he did not believe in the inspired authority 
of the Apostles, but because he desired to show to the 
men of his generation that they could not, consistently, 
continue to regard Jesus with veneration, even as a man, 
without also receiving from Him the doctrines which are 
here deduced from his words. . The work is written in a 
singularly calm and judicial spirit. No statement is over- 
strained. Every portion of the Lord's teachings is laid 
under tribute ; an unbiased interpretation of the meaning 
of each is reached through scholarly exegesis, and a fair 
inference is drawn from the whole. The method of the 
book is excellent ; the style is lucid ; the spirit is rever- 
ential ; and the result is satisfying. It was written by 
the author in the full maturity of his powers, and shows 
him at his best. We commend it to all Biblical stu- 
dents, not only as a richly suggestive treatment of its 
subject, but also as an excellent specimen of that Scrip- 
tural Induction on which all true theology must rest. 

Wm. M. Taylor. 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER L 

PAGE. 

Christ a Preacher. ....... 1-6 

Preaching the chief function of His life. .... 1 

He preached the Doctrines of a Positive Theology. . . 2 

His Words the true Christianity. ..... 3 

Doctrine necessary in "preaching Christ." . . . 4^6 



CHAPTER II. 

The Quality of Christ's Preaching. .... 6-19 

Impression of His preaching on contemporaries. . . 6-8 

Not due to the extent nor profundity of His discourses. . . 8-9 

His doctrine of God, of Man, and the Future State. . . 9-11 

The depth, simplicity and fulness of His teachings. . . 11-15 

Their influence upon human thought, character and society. . 15-17 

The world cannot outgrow His teachings. . . 17 



CHAPTER III. 

The Kingdom op God. ...... 19-32 

Christ preached " the kingdom of God." ... 19 

Jehovah the one Deliverer, as the germ of the Theocracy. . 20-25 

Hence the kingdom was internal and spiritual. . . 25 

Christ's Presence realizes the kingdom to the soul. . . 26 
Its rewards and glories spiritual. ..... 27 

The Church a form of the Kingdom. .... 29 

Dr. van Oosterzee's views of this Kingdom. . . 30, 31 



CHAPTER IV. 

The New Birth. ....... 32-49 

A Gentile Proselyte was "born again." ... 33 

The mistake of Nicodemus. ..... 34 

The birth psychological and divine .... 35 

An inward change required by the nature of the Kingdom. . 36 

Also by the wickedness of the human heart. ... 38 

Sin universal in the race. ..»..•. 40 

Repentance and renunciation necessary. , 41 

This effected through the divine Spirit. .... 42-45 

The conversion of Paul. ..... 45-47 

Sin made necessary the eoming of Christ. „ , . 47 



Xll 



CONTEXTS. 



CHAPTER V. 

Salvation made possible through the Death of Christ. . 49-67 

The Son of Man " lifted up ;" origin and meaning of the phrase. 49-52 

This death the means of salvatioD. .... 53 

The death in the plan of His mission. . . . 55-57 

Analogy of the brazen serpent. .... 57 

The plague of fiery serpents. .... 57-60 

Moral lessons of the plague. ..... 60 

The brazen serpent a type of mercy. ... 62 

Christ's death a ransom. . .... 63 

Meaning of \v T pov in the Greek classics and the Septuagint. 63 

Christ died for our salvation. ..... 65 



CHAPTER VI. 

Salvation limited only by Unbelief. .... 67-79 

The provision of mercy unlimited. .... 07 

Believing, the necessary condition. . . . .69 

The " drawing " of the Father, not arbitrary but gracious. . 70-75 

Men perish through unbelief and perversity of will. . . 75-78 



CHAPTER VII. 



The Nature of Religion. 

Varieties of religious development. 

The intellectual, formal, humanitary, imaginative, pietistic, all 

tried before Christ. 
Christ seated Religion in the heart. 
All religious acts must be spiritual. 
The Praying-machine of Thibet. 
Religion a principle of holy living. 
This the true theocracy. . . . 

This Christ's rule of personal life. 
An elective principle. ; 

" G-ood works " attest it. . . . 

All systems and lives to be brought to this test. 



, 


79-93 




. 79 


tic, all 






80-83 




83 


. 


. 84 




85 


, 


. 86 




87 


, 


. 88 




89 


. 


. 90 




91 



CHAPTER VIII. 



The Spirituality of Worship. 

Our idea of spirit derived from consciousness. 

God a personal spirit. .... 

Chris*t did not abolish external worship. . 

He made worship \he offering of the soul to its Father ; 

Such worship is rational. . . • . 

Opposed to ritualism and sentimentality. 

Christian worship adapted to universal man. 



93-104 

94 

95 

96 

97-99 

99 

100-102 

102 



CHAPTER IX. 



A Living Providence. 

The faith of " Sojourner Truth." . 
God's hand in the overthrow of Slavery. 
Mr. Buckle's theory of events. 



104-119 

104, 117 

105 

106 



CONTENTS. 



Xlll 



Comte's view. 

Positivism and Christianity irreconcilable. 

God in the " course of Nature." 

Providence universal and particular. 

Special divine intervention. 

Harmony of Providence with Reason. 

" ' " with Free Will. 

« " with General Laws. 



107 

107 

108-110 

111 

113 
114 
115 
116 



CHAPTER X. 



Op Prayer. 

Prayer an Instinct. 
Schleiermacher's definition. 
Prayer based upon Providence. 
A direct address to the Father. 
Prayer for Temporal Things. 
Prayer has positive influence with 
Professor Tyndall's objection. 
Conditions of successful prayer. 
The Power of Prayer. 



God. 



119-133 
119 
119 

120, 124 

120-123 
123 

124-130 
128 
130 
131 



CHAPTER XL 



Christ's Oneness with the Father. .... 

Christ's self-Assertion. ...... 

Mr. Liddon's view. ...... 

Christ did not openly proclaim His divinity at first. 

Meaning of the title " Son of God." .... 

a, as used by demons, 138. b, by enemies 139. e, by the cen- 
turion 139. d, by the High Priest 139. e, by the lisciples 140. 
/, by Christ Himself 141. 

The charge of " blasphemy " shows that Christ used this as a title 
of divinity. ...... 

His oneness with the Father not moral but essential. . . 

Christ's divinity taught by Himself. .... 

The testimony of Thomas. . . 



133-150 

133-136 

134 

137 

138-146 



143 
146 
148 
148 



CHAPTER XII. 

The Comforter, the Holy Ghost. . . . . 150-160 

The Holy Ghost the Revealer of Truth. . . . .150-153 

" " Source of Supernatural gifts and powers. 153 

He abides in the Church. ..... 154 

The Spirit a divine person. ..... 155-157 

The Gospels an insph-ed record. .... 157 

Personal uses of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. . . 158 

CHAPTER XIII. 



Paradise. ....... 160-173 

Prominence of Eschatology in Christ's Teachings. . . 160 

His promise to the dying thief. .... 161 

Views of early Fathers touching the state of departed spirits. 162 

The Rabbis on Paradise . . . . . .163 

Egyptian doctrine of the future State. . . . 164 



XIV 



CONTENTS 



Dante's Paradiso. . 

Paradise derived from the Sanscrit. 

Its use in the Septuagint. . 

The Primitive Paradise. 

Christ's use of the term. 

Elements of >.appiness in Paradise. 

Biblical Psychology. 

Paradise distinguished from Heaven. 

The final consummation. 

The grandeur of Redemption. 



164 
164 
166 
168 
170 
171 
172 
173 
174 
176 



CHAPTER XIV. 



The Resurrection of the Bead. .... 

Care of Christianity for the body. 

Its sympathy with the heart. .... 

Meaning of draoTaa-ts in the Greek classics, the Septuagint 
the Apocrypha. ..... 

The raising of Lazarus. ..... 

Christ's answer to the Sadducees. 

Hii discourse in John V. . . . 

His conversation with Martha. 

Christ Himself the Resurrection. . . . 

Miracle of His own Resurrection. ... 

Believers exempt from Death.. .... 

The scope of Redemption. .... 

The Christian faith a finality. .... 



and 



178-198 
178 
179 

180-185 

185, 191 
186 
187 
189 
190 
192 

. 194 
195 

. 196 



CHAPTER XV. 



The Final Judgment. 

Christ's Prerogative of Judgment. 
The Judgment public and formal. 
Retribution taught in Nature. 
Christ's Life and Word a present Judge. 
The Judgment universal. 

" at a set time — "that Day." 

Our Humanity in the Judge. 
Glory of the Incarnation. . . 



198-211 
198 
199 
200 
201 
204 
206 
207 

208-210 



CHAPTER XVI. 

The Blessedness of the Saints. ..... 211 

Christ's promise of the " new wine." .... 211-215 

Spiritual significance of this festival of love and joy. . , 214 

Saints in heaven enjoy the near presence of their Lord. . 216 

They are exalted in honor. > . . . .217 

They have the approbation of the Father. . . . 218 

The features of heavenly bliss. ..... 219 

Conditions of admission to heaven. .... 219-221 



CHAPTER XVII. 



Future Punishment. .... 
Christ preached the condemnation of unbelief. 
His warnings. .... 



222-237 
222 
223 



CONTENTS. 



XV 



Penal consequences in Nature. . . . 

Christ taught a personal and positive retribution. 

Penalty exists in fact. .... 

Is recognized as just. .... 

Natural evil is inflicted for moral offenses. 

The higher claims of moral law. 

The Justice of a personal reckoning. 

Retribution due to the grandeur of virtue. 

The dignity of man requires a moral law, with penalty. 

Justice the strength of Society. 

Christ's use of metaphor. .... 

KoAao-is denotes a literal punishment. 

Aiwuos means everlasting. . 



224-225 
226 
227 
227 

228, 229 
229 
230 
231 
232 
233 
234 
235 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



Christ's Doctrine our Spiritual Sacrament. 
Spirituality of Christ's teaching. 
His use of strong sensible language. . 

Neander on Eating His flesh. 
Transubstantiation. . . . 

The Friends' view of Sacraments. 
Christ appointed Sacraments. , . 

True Significance of the Supper. 



237-248 
237 
238 
240 

241-243 
243 
243 

245-247 



CHAPTER XIX. 



The Doctrine of Christ Complete as a Revelation prom God. 
Christ spake from the Father. 
Yet as a self-revelation. ..... 

Why did not Christ reveal more?. 

He addressed Himself not to curiosity but to necessity. . 

He sought to restore man to God. 

For this His teaching was complete. 

The vast range of His teaching, as to subjects and application. 

A Revelation for Higher Truths. 

His doctrine radical and revolutionary. . . 

Summary of His Doctrine. ., 

Christianity cannot be outgrown. . . 



248 
248 
249 

250-252 
252 
253 
254 

254-257 
257 
258 

259-261 
262 



APPENDIX I. 



The Genuineness op the Gospel of John. . . 264-275 

Characteristics of the fourth Gospel. . . • 264 

Views of Strauss and Baur. . . . . 265 

Internal evidences of genuineness. . . . 266 

Agreements between the Synoptics and John. . . 267 

The miracles in John's Gospel. . .... 268 

The style of the Gospel. .... 269 

Neander on John. . . 270 

External evidences of genuineness. . . . 271 

Testimony of Irenseus, Clement, Tertullian and Polyerates. . . 271 

Testimony of Valentimis, Marcion, Basilides and Justin Martyr. 272 

Bleek's Summary of the Argument. . . . 273-275 



XVI CONTENTS 



APPENDIX II. 



Dr. Van Oosterzee's Theology op the New Testament. 275-2S0 

Science of Biblical Theology. . . . . . 276 

Old Testament Foundations; Mosaism, Prophetism and Judaism. 276, 277 
The kingdom of God, in its subjects, blessings and consummation. 278 
The Theology of the fourth Gospel. ... . 279 



THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 



CHAPTEE I. 

CHRIST A PREACHER. 

Christ was a Preacher. He began His public life by 
preaching in the synagogues of Galilee; Pie closed it by 
preaching in the porch of the Temple at Jerusalem. He 
who was Himself the matter of the Gospel in the preaching 
of the apostles, and is now the constant theme of evangelic 
preaching, was the first preacher of His own Gospel, and 
made preaching the chief function of His life. That He 
manifested God by works of power, that He exhibited a 
perfect Humanity through a sinless life of love, that He 
constituted a new community to be known as His Church, 
that He suffered and died for a testimony unto the truth 
and for the redemption of mankind — all this does not 
exhaust nor embody the story of the mission of Christ as 
given in the Gospels. From first to last He is there the 
Preacher. 

Baptism was appointed by Him as the rite of initiation 
into Plis kingdom ; but " Jesus himself baptized not." l 
John had insisted hardly less upon baptism than upon 
repentance ; but after that John was put in prison, Jesus, 
taking up the work of reformation, came into Galilee, not 
baptizing with water, but " preaching the Gospel of the 
kingdom of God, and saying, the time is fulfilled, and the 
kingdom of God is at hand ; repent ye, and believe the 

1 John iv. 2. 
1 



2 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

Gospel." l The priestly office was exalted by Him into a 
spiritual mediatorship, when He made direct personal 
intercession with the Father for His disciples/ yet He 
neither offered sacrifices nor founded a priesthood, but 
Himself preached and commissioned others to preadi, "the 
Gospel of the kingdom." 3 A king He was, with authority 
to give laws and to change customs and institutions in 
religion, in society, in the state — in all this demanding 
the homage of the souls of men, — yet He wore no semb- 
lance of royalty, but rested the evidence of His kingship 
in that He "came into the world that He should bear 
witness unto the truth," 4 and the evidence of His Messiah- 
ship upon the fact that "the poor have the Gospel preached 
unto them." 5 While He founded a Church, and made 
provision for its officers, its sacraments and its discipline, 6 
He enjoined it upon His apostles to teach His command- 
ments, and "that repentance and remission of sins should 
be preached in His name among all nations." 7 

Preaching being the characteristic feature of the life of 
Christ, no true understanding of His mission can be had 
without a knowledge of what He preached as the truth of 
God. The Gospels which give us the record of His life 
contain also a Gospel which He preached ; and this Gospel 
comprises not only the rules of practical morality, the 
lessons and precepts of humanity and religion, but the 
Doctrines of a Positive Theology. It is sometimes alleged 
that Christ taught personally none of those doctrines which 
are commonly set forth by the Church in her creeds as 
distinctive of the Christian faith, but directed His teachings 
to practical life, inculcating the virtues, graces and charities 
that would reform, adorn and bless society, and elevate 
mankind : — that the doctrines of regeneration and atone- 

1 Mark i. 14, 15. 2 John xiv. 16, and c. xvii. 3 Mat. ix. 35, x. 7, xi. L 
* John xvii. 37. 5 Mat. xi. 5. 6 Mat. xvi. 18, 19. 

7 Mat. xxviii. 20 ; Luke xxiv. 47. 



HIS WORDS THE TRUE CHRISTIANITY. 6 

ment, of the divinity of Christ and the personality of the 
Holy Spirit, were woven out of His sayings by speculative 
minds among His followers, after Jesus had finished His 
personal testimony of truth and goodness, — that such doc- 
trines owe more to St. Paul and St. Augustine than to 
Christ, and belong not to the original substance of the 
Gospel, but to a philosophical theology that has grown up 
around it. This notion is somewhat favored by a common 
method of teaching theology — stating doctrines in technical 
terms and with scientific nicety, tracing their development 
in the history of the Church and of schools of philosophy, 
and finally authenticating them by citations from the 
Scriptures used mainly as proof-texts. For this purpose 
the writings of Paul, as the logical expounder of the 
Christian faith, are drawn upon more largely than other 
portions of the New Testament ; — the Pauline conception 
being taken as the basis of the Christian dogmatics, and 
the words of Jesus being used to verify the statement 
of His doctrines in the form of theological propositions. 
To reverse this method is to derive the Christian Theology 
primarily and directly from the words of Christ — a process 
in which we have to do not with the creeds of the Church 
nor the formulas of the theologians, but simply with the 
principles of interpretation. So far as the very words of 
Christ have been preserved, these form the essence of Chris- 
tianity, just as the original sayings of Socrates as preserved 
by his disciples are the substance of the Socratic wisdom. 
To the first preacher of Christianity must we look for the 
freshest, truest, best conception of the system. In His 
words we find a proper theology — not formulated, indeed, 
nor systematized, yet expressed in doctrines to be severally 
believed, — doctrines set forth with a certain gradation of 
time and thought, or in a certain order of development 
— and these doctrines interwoven with the whole texture 
of the precepts and promises of the Gospel. 



4 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

The study of the doctrines preached by Christ may 
exhibit the Christian faith in a phase differing somewhat 
from that presented through any sect or school ; especially 
will it give to that faith a life and warmth, a power of 
renewing and edifying, that is too much suppressed under 
the technicalities of creeds. To many the very word 
"doctrine" brings up reminiscences of the Catechism as a 
school-boy task, or of a formal text-book in theology, of 
dry, stiff propositions, having neither spiritual warmth nor 
practical utility. But the doctrines that Christ preached 
have as direct a bearing upon our lives as His precepts ; 
and, if we will but suffer it, will come home to our hearts 
with the emphasis of positive practical duties. Indeed the 
duties of the Christian life derive their obligation from the 
doctrines that make up the Christian faith. There is a 
good deal of cant now-a-days about "preaching Christ." 
In a great Christian Convention it was said lately, " the 
churches are dying of Theology; ministers must preach 
Christ," and the sentiment was received with applause. 
But Christ Himself preached theology, and it is not possible 
to preach Christ except one shall preach the doctrines that 
He taught and that are the substance of His gospel. Shall 
one preach that Jesus is the Saviour of mankind ? But this 
is a doctrine, to be illustrated from His life and death, and 
confirmed by His own words. Shall one preach that men 
must repent and believe, that they may be saved ? But this 
again is a doctrine, to be expounded, proved, enforced. 
Shall the preacher, with Paul "determine not to know 
anything, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified ?" l But the 
relation of Christ's death to our salvation, of all doctrines 
most requires clearness of statement and cogency of proof. 
If the Church is languid and feeble in face of Bationalism, 
Eitualism, and Materialism, it is for lack of a vigorous 
grasp of the doctrines of the gospel. Preaching has run 

i 1 Cor. ii i 2. 



HOW TO PREACH CHRIST. 

too much to the superficial, the fanciful, the sensational; 
men go to Church that they may be pleased and excited 
rather than instructed, for some transitory play upon the 
imagination and emotions rather than the lasting conviction 
of the understanding; whereas what most they need is 
that the intellectual and- moral nature be lifted up to the 
great thoughts of Christ, and so filled with His Spirit. 
Christ is best preached in the grand doctrines whereby He 
Himself preached the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. 1 

1 On Christ as a teacher of Theology, see Dr. B. Weiss, Lehrbuch der Biblis- 
chen Thcologie des Ncnen Testaments ; and Dr. J. J. Van Oosterzee, Die The- 
ologie dea Neuen Testaments. A good abstract of this latter work, with trans- 
lations, is given in the American Presbyterian Review for July, 1870. This 
author says, " To the teaching of the Lord we must ascribe a definite soterio- 
logical character. In other words, all that the Lord announces respecting God 
and man, sin and grace, the present and the future life, all, especially that He 
testifies respecting Himself, stands in direct relation to the salvation that He 
came to reveal and bestow. It is not so much religious truth in general as 
specifically saving truth that is brought to light by Him. The possibility of 
exhibiting the instruction of our Lord, with all its riches, as one whole lies just 
here, that it manifests from beginning to end the character of Gospel. Luke 
iv. 16, 22 ,• John vi. 68." 



CHAPTEE II. 

THE QUALITY OF CHRIST'S PREACHING. 

" Never man spake like this man," x said the officers who 
being sent to arrest Jesus were themselves arrested by the 
spell of His words. This spontaneous testimony of His 
contemporaries is also the deliberate verdict of history. 
All the ages since have not produced a competitor nor even 
a successor of Jesus as a teacher of wisdom and truth. 
His preaching always made upon His hearers the impression 
of something extraordinary in its character and peculiar to 
Himself. At His first discourse at Nazareth, the home of 
His youth, " all bare Him witness, and wondered at the 
gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth." 2 Nor 
was this the novelty of a first appearance, for the surprise 
was none the less when, a year later, after His preaching 
was widely known, He again taught at Nazareth " insomuch 
that they were astonished and said, "Wnence hath this man 
this wisdom and these mighty words? Is not this the 
carpenter's son ? Whence hath this man all these things ?" 3 
At Capernaum, where He preached so constantly, "they 
were astonished at His doctrine, for His word was with 
power." 4 The same effect was produced by the sermon on 
the mount, at the close of which it is said "the people 
were astonished at His doctrine ; for He taught them as 
one having authority, and not as the scribes." 5 

Once, for the purpose of entrapping Jesus, the most 
adroit and learned among the Jews concocted questions of 
casuistry, touching politics, theology, and morality, to be 

1 John vii. 46. 2 Luke iv. 22. 3 Matt. xiii. 54. 

* Luke iv. 32. & Matt. vii. 28, 29. 



TESTIMONY OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 7 

put to Him in presence of the people. First the politicians 
tried Him with the question of paying tribute to Cesar ; 
but when they got His answer, " they marvelled, and left 
Him, and went their way." l Next, the Sadducees sought 
to embarrass Him upon the doctrine of the resurrection, 
but He put them also to silence, and the multitude, hearing 
His reply, " were astonished at His teaching." 2 Last of 
all, a lawyer demanded a categorical answer to the question 
" Which is the great commandment," but after the reply of 
Jesus, followed by His own questions touching the Messiah, 
" no man was able to answer Him a word, neither durst 
any man from that day forth, ask Him any more questions." 8 
When Jesus stood before Pilate, the Governor was so awed 
by the words and bearing of his prisoner, that he sought to 
escape the responsibility of condemning Him. Some such 
impression of the extraordinary, the marvellous, and even 
of the divine, was a common effect of the preaching of 
Jesus among all classes of hearers. So strong was this 
impression upon the disciples who heard Him in every 
kind of address — parables, proverbs, set discourses, public 
disputations — and also in the freedom of familiar conversa- 
tion, that they said to Him, "Thou hast the words of 
eternal life : and we believe and are sure that thou art that 
Christ, the Son of the living God." i 

What were the qualities of the preaching to which such 
effects were ascribed by the contemporaries of Christ we 
are not left to conjecture, since we can measure their 
impressions by our own, and by the accumulated testimony 
of the ages since. Of the eloquence of Pericles, who was 
said to carry upon his tongue the thunderbolts of Jove, not 
a fragment survives to certify his fame as the greatest of 
Athenian orators. The fragmentary remains of other 
orators of antiquity do not always sustain their reputation 
in their time. There is in the printed page so little of 

1 Matt. xxii. 22. 2 Matt. xxii. 33. 3 Matt. xxii. 46. 4 John vi. 63, 69. 



8 THE THEOLOGY OF CHEIST. 

strength or fire that one marvels wherein lay the charm 
that gave such effect to the spoken words, and feels that 
much which is ascribed to the wisdom and eloquence of the 
speaker lay in the feelings of the hearer, or the circum- 
stances of the hour. A few, like Demosthenes and Cicero, 
have left orations that justify their fame, and serve as 
models for modern eloquence. And here and there, in the 
literary history of the world, is one whose words of wisdom 
and beauty have gathered fame with the ages, and are 
even more appreciated now than they were in their time. 
Plato and Shakespeare have a wider audience of mankind, 
and a higher repute with men of thought and culture than 
in their own generations ; — their penetrative and compre- 
hensive wisdom is not dimmed by contrast with any of 
their successors. Now in respect of the words of Jesus 
Christ, which so wrought upon the minds of His contem- 
poraries, and have so ruled the thought and life of after- 
times, it is possible to measure and weigh their significance, 
to compare them with the utterances of any other teacher, 
and to analyze the sources of their power. His preaching 
remains upon record to testify that " never man spake like 
this man." 

This impression of the transcendent worth of the sayings 
of Christ does not arise in any degree from the extent of 
His discourses. There are authors whose works are a 
library of themselves; and as we look Upon the shelves 
where twenty, thirty, forty volumes represent a Dickens, 
a Scott, a Schiller, a Thiers, a Voltaire, an Owen, a Bacon, 
we are amazed at the prolific genius, the patient industry, 
or the vast erudition that such works display. But all 
that is recorded of the sayings of Christ, together with 
the history of His life, is contained in a duodecimo of 
eighty pages;— less than one half of the New Testament 
is the total of what Jesus said and did,— less than one 
fourth is ail that is preserved of what He himself spake. 



9 

Neither is the superiority of Jesus as a preacher due to 
an air of learning or of profundity in His utterances. A 
few names — but only the selectcst few — are accepted as 
authorities in their several departments of literature or 
science, because of the accuracy of their knowledge and 
the solidity of their attainments; others, by an encyclo- 
paedic acquaintance with the results of science, win a more 
transient reputation of universal knowledge ; while others 
— more commonly in schools of metaphysics — are taken to 
be wise because they seem to be profound. But this New 
Testament preacher makes no show of learning, and deals 
with no subject that calls for book-knowledge. Science, 
physical or metaphysical, He does not touch upon; political 
and social questions He alludes to only incidentally or by 
way of inference ; but of truths that concern one's spiritual 
nature, and of duties between man and man and from man 
toward God, He speaks as never man spake, before nor 
since. This is true equally of the Matter of His speech, 
of the Manner of it, and of its Effects upon human thought, 
character, and society. 

For the Matter of His teaching — to anticipate in part 
what will be fully brought out in future chapters — take 
for instance His doctrine of God : — a Spirit to be approached 
with spiritual worship and with sincerity of heart; so pure, 
so holy, so good, that absolute perfection is to be perfect as 
our Father in heaven; governing the world with a Provi- 
dence so minute that the hairs of our heads are numbered, 
so gentle that not a sparrow falleth to the ground without 
our Father; so kind that one can have no cause for anxiety 
in temporal things, if he will but trust in God ; a Moral 
Governor also, who makes the law of holy love the absolute 
rule of life and blessedness, who searches the heart by this 
law, who estimates character by its standard, and who will 
hereafter judge all men by it in their motives and their 
deeds;— but while thus supreme as Ruler and Judge, 



10 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

asserting over mankind His holy and universal authority, 
yet compassionate toward the guilty, seeking to save them 
from their sins and bring them into loving fellowship with 
Himself as their Father: — a God whose holiness is love 
and whose love would have men become perfect in holiness 
that they may be perfect in blessedness. "Whoever will 
compare this Theology of Jesus, item by item, and in its 
grand totality, with the speculations of philosophers con- 
cerning the essence and nature of the Supreme Being and 
His agency in the world, and with the theories by which 
moralists have sought to harmonize truth, justice, love, 
holiness in the character of God, must confess that never 
man spake like this man — never man formed a concep- 
tion of the divine Being so clear, so positive, so complete, 
so absolute in every perfection, and so beautiful in the 
harmony of all, so majestic in character and sovereignty 
yet so approachable by man, so lofty and glorious, yet so 
gracious and so near! 

The same transcendent quality appears in the substance 
of Christ's doctrine of man: — a personal soul, a spiritual 
being, and as such worth more to himself than the whole 
world; a sinner whose heart is a fountain of evil, yet 
capable of becoming pure and holy as a child of God; 
an immortal spirit, who by virtue of his character, shall 
hereafter take his place either with spirits of darkness or 
with the angels that behold the face of God ; a moral being 
created for love, and for whom the fellowship of human 
love would make a perfect society and loving God a present 
heaven. Whoever will take this anthropology of Christ 
and compare it with scientific theories of the origin and 
end of man, and metaphysical speculations touching his 
nature, his capacity, and his future, must confess that never 
man spake like this man : — never did philosopher form of 
Humanity a picture so true, an ideal so high, suggest a 
character so noble, and make this possible by living ex- 



11 

ample, or open to the Race so grand and glorious a future; 
and never did philanthropist kindle such enthusiasm of 
love for Humanity itself. 

This superhuman quality in the preaching of Christ is 
even more impressive in His doctrine of the Resurrection. 
A belief in the immortality of the soul — a belief that seems 
rooted in the soul itself — was widely, though perhaps 
vaguely entertained, long before the time of Christ; and 
the practice of mummification among the Egyptians was 
based upon the expectation of a return of the soul to the 
body ; but he who will ponder Christ's assurance of a final 
victory over death and the grave and of a personal identity 
not only realized in consciousness but manifested in outward 
appearance, and will reflect upon the dignity that such a 
promise restores to our fallen nature, the consolation it 
imparts to grief, the hope and solace to love, must acknow- 
ledge that in the highest concernment of man — his existence 
and condition after death — never man spake like this man 
who said " I am the resurrection and the life : he that be- 
lieveth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. 7 ' 1 

Turning from {he Matter of Christ's preaching to the 
Manner of it — from what He said to the way in which He 
said it, one is impressed, first of all, with the calm spiritual 
depth of His sayings. With no air of profundity, the 
sayings of Jesus have a depth of meaning that no philoso- 
phy has yet fathomed. But this depth is not obscurity, it 
is simply deepness. Depth of reasoning sometimes leads 
to obscurity of statement ; the intellectual process becomes 
confused, or the listener loses the clue, or language furnishes 
no terms for the more delicate shades of meaning. But an 
intuition of the spiritual life — a truth the attestation of 
which should be given directly by conscience or in 
consciousness, however deep in meaning, may be always 
clear in expression. Philosophers go to the bottom of 

1 John xi. 25. 



12 THE THEOLOGY OP CHRIST. 

* 

their own thoughts, but Christ went to the bottom of 
things; and one can see the truth as He states it, and feel 
that it is the truth, though he may not at first measure its 
whole depth, just as without diving to the bottom of the 
ocean, one may see that the bottom is deep, and that pearls 
are lying there. This profound clearness in the utterances 
of Christ is due to His intuitive and absolute knowledge. 
Where others seek after truth by long processes of investi- 
gation, and find it only in fragments, Jesus saw truth 
ensphered before Him like a crystal, and He so states the 
truth that we see it and feel it, although not always able 
fully to grasp it. Thus one may read metaphysical 
philosophy from Plato to Kant without gaining a clear 
positive conception of that Infinite Spirit in whose existence 
all such philosophy must terminate. But when Christ 
says, " God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must 
worship Him in spirit and in truth/' we feel that God is 
a Personal Reality ; and though Christ does not define 
the nature of spirit, yet when He speaks of God as thinking, 
willing, loving — His Father and ours — we understand 
Him better than the philosophers, though He penetrates to 
the inmost depths of a nature which they had vainly 
sought to define. His depth is clear and calm because He 
speaks the words of everlasting truth. 

The simplicity with which He utters the profoundest 
truths distinguishes Jesus from all other teachers. It was 
said of the orations of Demosthenes that they smelt of the 
lamp, and the attention of the hearer was divided between 
what was said and the labor bestowed in saying it well. 
The elaborate finish of a Cicero, a Burke, an Everett, often 
diverts the mind from the thought to the style. On the 
other hand, the apothegms of some of the most renowned 
sages are uttered with an air of wisdom that offends the 
taste. But Jesus never labors to make an impression, nor 
works up an effect with careful logic and rhetoric. " His 



Christ's preaching personal. 13 

doctrine drops as the rain, and his speech distils as the 
dew." 

One reason of this clearness is itself a characteristic of 
the sayings of Christ — their adaptation to the hearts and 
lives of men. He is not like the chemist, who shuts 
himself up in his laboratory to analyze substances and form 
new compounds, and now and then gives to the world a 
new discovery — a result without process; nor like the 
philosopher who withdraws from common life into a region 
of abstractions ; but His teaching is like the sunlight, for 
every body's eyes, like the air, for every body's lungs. 
The God whose infinity, spirituality, majesty, glory, holiness, 
He sets forth in such pregnant words, is your Father and 
mine; the soul whose salvation He weighs against the 
whole world is your soul and mine ; the law of holy love, 
not one jot or tittle of which shall fail, though heaven and 
earth pass, is the rule for your life and mine ; the kingdom 
of God is within us ; His Father's house is ours ; the most 
sublime and oppressive truths of the spiritual world, the 
most profound mysteries in the relations of the divine to 
the human through creation, incarnation and redemption, 
the most thrilling and exquisite discoveries of the future 
life are brought home as present and personal to every 
man. So personal are they, that to receive them into our 
hearts makes them our own almost as much as if we had 
originated them. On reading the declarations of the 
Sermon on the Mount, we find them so simple as to seem 
in a sense natural ; we wonder we had not thought of them 
before; and yet, so deep and full are they that we can 
never exhaust them. For instance, the saying " Blessed 
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God " is so obvious, 
so true to the nature of things, that it appeals to every one 
as a direct personal summons to a holy life ; and yet the 
most experienced Christian, the most profound theologian, 
has not exhausted its meaning — not Baxter nor Edwards, 



] -i THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

not John nor Panl knew all that it is to be pure in heart, 
nor could tell all that it will be to see God. Truth as 
spoken by Christ belongs to us as the sky under which we 
live : it is our heaven ; we drink its light, we breathe its 
air, we grow familiar with its stars, we bathe our fancy in 
its clear ether, and have a home-like feeling of possession — ■ 
yet we can never reach its horizon nor climb to its zenith. 
Never man spake like this man — bringing God and truth 
and heaven so near, yet making all so vast and glorious. 

Another peculiarity of the sayings of Christ is the sense 
of fulness they carry with them, and of this fulness as 
proceeding from Himself. One sometimes feels that a 
teacher has not mastered his subject, or if at home upon 
one subject he is not equally learned in all ; and when the 
most learned have told all they know, there remains some- 
thing more for themselves as well as their pupils to acquire. 
But Jesus speaks with the composure and certainty that 
fulness gives ; His words flow as from a fountain, and not 
only so, but the truth He imparts becomes in those who 
receive it " a well of living water, springing up into ever- 
lasting life." x In listening to Him one never feels that 
He has exhausted Himself while other truth remains to be 
learned, but that He knows all truth, and contains it 
within Himself. For truth as spoken by Christ carries 
with it the conviction that what He utters is part of 
Himself. It is not truth that He has studied and developed 
as an intellectual system — as Copernicus the astronomical 
and Cudworth the intellectual system of the universe ; it is 
not a doctrine that He has derived from another, and 
teaches with His own methods and illustrations — as Plato 
expanded and formulated the doctrines of Socrates, — but the 
Truth He speaks is in and of Himself. 

We make such poor work of setting forth the truth, so 
feeble an impression of its reality and power, because our 

1 John iv. 14. 



CHRIST SPAKE AS THE TRUTH. 15 

own experience of the truth is so limited and imperfect. 
It does not come from the depth of our consciousness; it 
is not incorporated with the life of our souls, so as to give 
the impression that we are Truth itself; and we take up 
with half-truths, or defective and distorted representations 
in the place of Truth. Even the wisest men sometimes 
put forth as profound ideas what to others seem like com- 
mon-places ; and most men are themselves so very common- 
place, of narrow views and narrow feelings, always in the 
same ruts of trade or politics or opinion, bigoted, preju- 
diced, self-willed, never rising to broad and generous views 
— that they give to what little of truth they do receive 
the complexion of their own minds, and make this com- 
mon-place as themselves. 

But Jesus stands before us as Himself the Truth, making 
upon all that hear Him the impression that He knows that 
of which He speaks, knows it truly, knows it deeply, 
knows it fully, and utters it from His inmost soul. Hence 
what He says is always fresh, and constant repetition 
cannot make it old. If He speaks of purity of heart, we 
know that He Himself is pure; if He commands us to 
love one another, we feel that He Himself is love; if He 
speaks of God, He produces the conviction that He knows 
the Father as the Father knows Him. His very words 
carry with them the assurance that He is the Truth. 
Never man spake like this man. 

The sayings of Christ, far more than those of any other 
teacher, are certified by their effects, especially in the higher 
spheres of human thought and feeling. Since the beginning 
of the Christian era, how large a portion of the literature 
of the world has been devoted to the exposition and illus- 
tration of His words, or directly or indirectly has grown 
out of them. What vast libraries and sections of libraries 
in Europe and America are filled with books of Christian 
theology, commentary, and history. Down to the time 



16 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

of the Reformation, how little literature was known to 
Christendom that was not distinctively Christian, and since 
then how largely has Christianity influenced the thought 
and learning of the world. Strike out from the literature 
of the Christian era all that is in any way derived from or 
related to the sayings of Christ, and what would remain 
in comparison worthy to influence the higher thought and 
life of mankind? How little is there in the sayings of 
other men that the world cherishes as life-words! How 
many volumes have been made simply by commenting 
upon the words of Christ ! 

Every one is familiar with Sir Walter Scott's dying 
testimony to the Book — "Need you ask? There is but 
one ;" 1 and the great humorist of our time has left this 
record of his obligations to the life of Christ — " I have 
always striven in my writings to express veneration for 
the life and lessons of our Saviour ; because I feci it, and 
because I rewrote that history for my children ;" and in 
his last will, he enjoined it upon his children to " try and 
guide themselves by the teachings of the New Testament." 2 

The power of Christ's doctrine has been equally apparent 
upon human society. A new Society, altogether peculiar, 
whose foundation is faith in Christ Himself, whose bond is 
love to Him and His, whose aim is moral perfection, has 
come into existence through His word, and to-day exists 
over half the globe. The Church of Christ founded 
without political purpose or physical power, upon a "Word, 
an Idea, and expanding through the ages with an undying 
spiritual life, witnesses that never man spake like this man. 
Moreover, His words have penetrated civil society, have 
infused into government the idea of justice, have redressed 
social wrongs, have harmonized legislation, and lifted the 
masses to a higher plane of thought and hope. 

1 Life by Lockhart, vol. vii. chap. xi. 

2 The will of Mr. Dickens as quoted by Dean Stanley in his funeral 
discourse. 



CHRIST SPEAKS TO THE HEART. 17 

But more than all is the power of Christ's doctrine 
manifested in the history of the heart, under all the mani- 
fold phases of human feeling. The heart in perplexity 
needs not instruction so much as light, and the words of 
Christ are like sunlight upon a mind in spiritual darkness. 
The heart in trouble needs not teaching so much as 
sympathy, and the words of Christ come to it in sorrow 
with all the tenderness of the tears He wept with Martha 
and Mary, with all the comfort of the promise "Thy 
brother shall rise again ! " The heart that knows the 
bitterness of sin wants not relief only but renewal, trans- 
formation; not merely pardon but salvation through 
recovery to purity and to a life in God, and the words of 
Christ are pardon, ^>eace, purity, salvation, life. The 
heart so deceived by the world, so misled by itself, needs 
truth to rest upon and love to confide in ; and the words 
of Christ invite us to lean upon Him as did John at the 
supper. What myriads of hearts have been swayed, 
molded, strengthened, comforted by His words ! 

The world has not yet outgrown the teachings of Christ, 
Great advances have been made in physical science since 
His day, especially within our own times; but science has 
discovered nothing more precious for the soul's culture than 
the truths that Christ brought into the world. The Phi- 
losophy of Humanity has grown to a science since Jesus 
taught, but this has advanced no doctrine of development 
or perfectibility more elevating or more encouraging than 
His. Science dishonors itself when it affects to ignore the 
teachings of Christ: for whatever else is true, His word is 
Truth ; whatever else is brought to light, His word is both 
Light and Life. 

Was He then who uttered these marvelous, far-reaching, 
unequaled words only a Man, of loftier genius or keener 
insight than the rest of His race? Will this account for 
those sayings of His that so distance all human wisdom 

2 






18 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

and so control the world? Must we not accept His own 
explanation of this unparalleled phenomenon — " The words 
that I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself, but the 
Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works." 1 Can 
His other sayings be true, if that saying was false? In 
view of the quality of Christ's preaching as tested by the 
results of eighteen hundred years, must not we say with 
even more than the confidence of the first disciples, " Thou 
hast the words of eternal life ; and we believe and are sure 
that Thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God?" 2 

1 John xiv, 10. 2 John vi. 68, 69, 



CHAPTER III. 

THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

The whole circle of doctrines taught by Christ revolves 
about this central point — that He represented to men the 
Kingdom of God. Jesus began His public life by 
"preaching the Gospel of the kingdom of God;" saying, 
"the kingdom of God is at hand; repent ye, and believe 
the Gospel." l In the first commission that He gave to the 
twelve disciples, Jesus "sent them to preach the kingdom 
of God." 2 In His parables He spake continually of the 
"kingdom of God" and the "kingdom of heaven." He 
represented faith in Himself as the door of entrance into 
the kingdom of God; He promised His followers the 
highest honor and blessing in the kingdom of God. 

What then is this kingdom of God which Jesus preached 
as His Gospel? and how does the knowledge of this 
Kingdom bring us under obligation to repent, and give us 
encouragement to believe? The answer to these questions 
must be sought in the meaning of this phrase as it required 
to be understood by the Jews of Christ's own time. To 
the men whom Christ addressed, the kingdom of God was 
no new idea; or rather, it was no new phrase — but it can 
hardly be said to have represented any definite idea to a 
generation that had so far lost the meaning of their own 
law and history. If we study closely the religion of the 
Old Testament we shall find that all its doctrines, laws, 
and institutions grow out of this fundamental thought — 
that God who Himself is pure and spiritual, is the true 
and only Redeemer of all those who desire to be no more 

1 Mark i. 14, 15, 2 L u ^ e ix . 2 . 

19 



20 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

estranged from Him; that God calls men to Himself and 
seeks to deliver them from bondage : — this precious truth 
was sealed by the deliverance in Egypt, and the won- 
drous rescue at the Red Sea; and afterwards became the 
foundation stone of the whole community of Israel, as 
well as the sole vivifying impulse of all devotion. 1 The 
grand thought that Moses brought to Israel was that 
Jehovah, the living God, the spiritual and eternal God, 
was the true Deliverer; that He desired men to come to 
Him in spiritual trust and worship, and that to every one 
who would so come to Him, this eternal God would be a 
present help, a refuge from every trouble, care, and sorrow. 

What the heathen had blindly struggled after in all the 
multitude of their gods and religious forms, Jehovah had 
brought to men in this Revelation of Himself; a God not 
far off but nigh to every one of us; a God who is seeking 
men and drawing them to Himself; a God who touches 
the human spirit by His own infinite Spirit, that He may 
awaken within it a childlike faith and love; a God 
manifesting Himself to our consciousness as a Deliverer 
from sin and evil and death. 

This truth was formally embodied in the doctrine of 
a Kingdom of God in this world, the nucleus of which was 
His redeemed people of Israel. The political constitution 
of Israel as a Nation was but a frame for this spiritual 
kingdom. For a time Jehovah stood directly as the Head 
of the Nation, declaring His will through the prophets, 
and by extraordinary manifestations ; and when the people 
so far declined from this vivid spiritual conception of 
Jehovah as their deliverer that they desired an earthly 
king, then the kingly office was made a type of the divine 
authority that yet ruled in the hearts of the true Israel : 
the prophets strove to hold the people as a nation to the 
original spiritual idea of this divine kingdom, and pre- 

1 Ewald, History of Israel, i. 533-36. 



THE "KINGDOM OF GOD" IN JEREMIAH. 21 

dieted a time when the kingdom of spiritual life and power, 
— a kingdom in which God Himself, the pure, the holy, the 
spiritual, the eternal, should be acknowledged and served 
as Redeemer and Lord — should be manifested not for 
Israel only but to the whole world. This was the time of 
promise that Jesus announced as fulfilled ; this the " good 
news " He preached " of the kingdom of God." 

The true conception of this kingdom stands out in the 
predictions of Jeremiah concerning the days of the Messiah. 
When this prophet wrote, the political kingdom had run 
itself down into disgrace and bankruptcy, through the vices 
of the kings, and the general wickedness of the people ; but 
although the monarchy should be overthrown, and king 
and people be carried away captive, the Kingdom of God 
in the true Israel — as represented by the prophet and by 
all believing souls — could not be destroyed. Indeed, 
when armies should have failed and all earthly hopes have 
perished, then would stand out more clearly than ever the 
truth that Jehovah was the only Deliverer, that He who 
delivered Israel out of Egypt, must now deliver them from 
the oppression and captivity that threatened them and from 
the sins that had brought them into such disaster and 
perils ; then too would be revived the confidence of the 
true Israel, through a humble, trustful submission to the 
will of God — faith in Jehovah as a Deliverer. 

This view of the kingdom of God may be interpreted to 
us by our familiar conceptions of the national and historical 
spirit in a people, as distinguished from the form of gov- 
ernment and the practical administration of affairs. If, 
for instance, one loses confidence in a President, or a 
Ministry, he does not abandon constitutional government 
as a failure, but the ideal of a good government then 
stands out in bold relief. When the lawful government of 
the United States was assailed by rebellion, and it was 
attempted to disintegrate the Union by violence, then the 



22 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

spirit of law and order, the essence of government embodied 
in the Constitution, came forth more vividly in the con- 
sciousness of the people, and inspired them with new faith 
and courage ; and more than all, the idea of God as the 
Deliverer of the Nation in its past history, and as its 
present dependence and hope, came into prominence, and 
His kingdom was made manifest in the signal providences 
of the War, and in the overthrow of Slavery. This near 
experience may help us to understand what to the true 
Israelite was the kingdom of God; — not simply His Provi- 
dential government over the world at large ; nor His 
universal government over this and all worlds; nor the 
form of political constitution and laws given by Jehovah 
to Israel ; nor the King and High Priest set up in His 
name; but the presence and power of God felt and 
acknowledged in the hearts of those that trusted in Him 
and did His commandments. 

It was this spiritual conception of a kingdom within 
Israel itself, — that did not embrace all Israel, and yet was 
greater than Israel, because it did possess and should 
hereafter more and more possess souls outside the pale of 
the Jewish commonwealth — that Jeremiah seized so vividly 
at the very moment when the national monarchy was sinking 
into nothingness. "After those days, saith the Lord, I 
will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in 
their hearts ; and will be their God, and they shall be my 
people .... for they shall all know me, from the least 
of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord : for I 
will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin 
no more." l Where Jehovah was sought and acknow- 
ledged as the Saviour from sin, and His will was received 
into the heart as its law, there was the kingdom of God. 
Daniel, himself a captive, while Jerusalem lay waste and 
her monarchy was overthrown, had a glorious vision of 

1 Jeremiah xxxi. 33, 34. 



THE "KINGDOM OF GOIX IN EZEKIEL. 23 

this spiritual kingdom, to be revived under Messiah the 
Prince, and he even measured off by outward events the 
time when His kingdom would be made manifest. Ezekiel 
likened the manifestation of the true Israel to a resurrec- 
tion of dry bones ; — " A new heart also will I give you, 
and a new spirit will I put within you : and I will take 
away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you 
a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, 
and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep 
my judgments, and do them." l Thus underlying the 
whole history of Israel, and all the forms of the Jewish 
state and religion, was the idea of a living present God 
who dwelt in the hearts of all true worshipers, "as a 
monarch living among his subjects ;" — the temple was His 
visible house, a representative of His sacred majesty, and 
its sacrifices showed how He was to be approached for the 
forgiveness of sin; but His true abode was in hearts 
delivered from sin, that honored and obeyed Him as the 
Redeemer-God. 

With this spiritual conception of the kingdom — the 
presence of God as a Saviour realized to the soul — it is 
easy to understand how Jesus " preached the Gospel of the 
Kingdom of God." Coming at a time when the Jews 
were vassals of the Roman power ; when deprived of every 
symbol of their nationality save their temple and its wor- 
ship, they were yearning for a Deliverer ; to the nominal 
people of God thus subjugated by military rule, yet cling- 
ing to the ancient promise of a Messiah who should restore 
the glory of the theocracy, He said, " I bring to you the 
good news of the kingdom of God; in Me Jehovah once 
more comes to you as a Deliverer ; the time predicted by 
Daniel is fulfilled ; the new covenant promised by Jeremiah 
is brought to you in my gospel ; repent of the sins that 
have humiliated and well-nigh destroyed you; renounce 
your vain hopes of deliverance, and trust in Me as your 

1 Ezek. xxxvi. 26, 2T, and Chap, xxxvii. 



24 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

Saviour ; repent and believe the Gospel, for the kingdom 
of God is at hand." The expectation of such a kingdom 
already existed in the minds of the more devout and 
spiritual among the Jews. Zacharias anticipated the 
advent of the Messiah as the appearing of " the Day-spring 
from on high," whose ways John was sent to prepare, " by 
giving knowledge of salvation unto His people for the 
remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our 
God." l The aged Simeon waited for " the consolation of 
Israel," and when the child Jesus was presented in the 
temple, with prophetic insight he recognized in Him the 
promised salvation — " a light to lighten the Gentiles, and 
the glory of Israel." 2 Joseph of Arimathea was one who 
in the same spirit " waited for the kingdom of God," and 
he boldly identified himself with the name of Jesus, in 
what seemed the darkest hour of His cause. 3 But though 
this finer spiritual conception of the kingdom of God 
existed in the minds of the more devout, the body of the 
nation looked only for the restoration and perfection of the 
Davidic theocracy in perpetuity. Because of this popular 
expectation of the Messianic kingdom, which could easily 
have been kindled into the fever of a revolution, Jesus 
refrained from announcing Himself as the Messiah, until 
by His teaching and works He had gained a footing for 
that spiritual commonwealth which in reality He had come 
to establish. This commonwealth began in the little 
company of His personal disciples — a community brought 
into existence not by any supernatural intervention in the 
outward condition of the people, but through His own 
spiritual efficiency ; and thus the very substance of the 
kingdom of God was seen to be independent of its realiza- 
tion in the form of the national Theocracy. 4 Yet even 

1 Luke i. 76-79. 2 Luke ii. 25-33. 8 Mark xv. 43. 

* See a fine analysis of the doctrine cf Jesus concerning the kingdom 
of God in Weiss' Lehrbuch der BlhUschen Theolngie des N. TeMaments, pp. 
49-57. Ft Van Oosterzee'a view see note at the end of this Chapter. 



THE KINGDOM IN AND OF THE HEART. 25 

this community, though based upon the spiritual doctrine 
of Christ and held together by a personal faith in Him, 
did not constitute the kingdom of God in the most pure 
and absolute sense. One of the primitive circle of twelve 
was a devil, l a confederate of Satan, the grand enemy of 
Christ, and of the kingdom that He had come to establish. 
The true kingdom commences always in the hearts of 
individuals, and spreads only by the communication of 
spiritual life. In all His parables and discourses touching 
the kingdom of God, Christ adhered to this spiritual con- 
ception. The kingdom consists in doing the will of the 
Father, and the perfection of the Theocracy will be realized 
when that will shall be done by men on earth as it is done 
by the angels in heaven — in a word, supreme love to God 
is the consummation of the kingdom. 

Hence the kingdom of God cometh not with observa- 
tion. 2 It has none of the outward pomp and circumstance 
of royalty, but is the development of an internal power. 
To find it one needs not to go to this place or that, to join 
this organization or that, participate in this ceremony or 
that ; — " The kingdom of God is within you." 3 One be- 
comes a subject of it in his own consciousness ; when he, 
by believing, receives Christ into his heart as his Saviour, 
then does God as his Kedeemer, take charge of him, enter 
into him to guide, keep, sanctify, and save him ; and this 
coming to the realization of God in His supreme lordship 
over the soul is the kingdom. 

This kingdom has laws for the regulation of the life 
through purifying and ennobling the heart. These laws, 
as embodied in the sermon on the mount, though in 
the form of simple maxims, strike down to the deepest 
springs of thought and motive. They revolve about 
two cognate ideas, Purity and Love: — "Blessed are the 
pure in heart, for they shall see God :" 4 — " Be ye there- 

1 John vi. 70. 2 Luke xvii. 20. 3 Luke xvii. 21. * Matt. v. 8. 



26 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

fore perfect [i. e., in love] even as your Father which is in 
heaven is perfect : " l — a pure and holy love toward God 
and man is the kingdom of heaven. 

This kingdom has its privileges. Every subject is 
treated as a son. There are no gradations of rank, no 
intermediaries upon whose influence at court we must rely 
for favor ; but the King himself comes by His Spirit to the 
heart of each subject and there abides : " If any man love 
Me, he will keep My words ; and My Father will love 
him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode 
with him. 7 ' 2 

This presence of Christ in the soul imparts power 
against all spiritual enemies; the very coming of the 
kingdom is deliverance from condemnation and death. 
The entering in of this kingdom is the casting out of 
Satan ; — " When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, 
his goods are in peace : But when a stronger than he shall 
come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all 
his armor wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils." 3 
Jesus spake this to illustrate His power against Satan : " If 
I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the 
kingdom of God is come upon you ;" 4 the overthrow of 
Satanic power in the world, the subjugation of the power 
of evil in any form, the breaking of hostile power by a 
power from above, marked the coming of the kingdom of 
God. As the advance of the Union army into the Southern 
States gave a sense of deliverance and safety to loyalists 
who had been held in durance and terror by the Confeder- 
ates — the very coming of the flag of the Union into a place 
being the symbol of power and the pledge of emancipation 
— so the entering of the Gospel into a heart to possess it 
with its faith, its promises, and its hopes, is the signal of 
deliverance from the bondage of Satan, and the coming in 

i Matt. v. 48, and xxii. 37-41. 3 Luke xi. 21, 22. 

2 John xiv. 23. 4 Luke xi. 20. 



REWARDS OF THE KINGDOM. 27 

of the kingdom of God. The presence of Christ is the 
subjugation of His enemies. 

Through this presence the soul is sanctified and enno- 
bled ; the reign of pure desires, devout affections, noble 
purposes is established within. The principle of holy love 
enthroned as the law of the mind, subjugates evil propen- 
sities, eradicates wrong habits, and every such subjection of 
the unholy is the dominion of the good and true. 

This kingdom has its rewards, both present and pros- 
pective. There is no higher joy in kind than the free 
communion of the heart with one whom it thoroughly 
admires, respects, and loves ; and the highest measure of 
this joy is found in that endearing fellowship with the 
Father into which the soul enters through its fellowship of 
faith and love with Christ, and which Jesus promised to 
His disciples as the compensation for His own withdrawal : 
" He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father f ■ 
" Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you ;" 2 
"These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy might 
remain in you, and that your joy might be full." 3 

And this present joy, so rich and satisfactory, is but the 
prelude to the rewards of the future of this kingdom. To 
be pronounced the blessed of the Father, and publicly 
welcomed to that sphere of light and glory where Jehovah 
is enthroned ; to sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob 
in the kingdom of God; to be with Christ in person and 
behold His glory, — these are but items in the rich roll of 
blessings promised to the recipients of the Gospel. And 
these rewards shall be eternal. A Messianic kingdom 
reproducing the theocracy of David, would have been 
subject to the incidents of all earthly governments and all 
types of material organization. Limited in extent, confined 
to the conditions of place, exposed to the conflicts of hostile 
powers, it must eventually have shared the fate of other 

1 John xiv. 21. 2 John xiv. 27. 3 John xv. 11. 



28 THE THEOLOGY OF CHEIST. 

temporal governments ; or even had it outlasted these, it 
must have been circumscribed in territorial dominion and 
in the number of its immediate subjects. But lying 
wholly within the spiritual, which is immortal, incorpo- 
rated with the very life of the soul, not only will it survive 
the destruction of all outward forms and of the world 
itself, but it shall endure with the duration of being. 
Divine forces are in it for its perpetual conservation ; it is 
the kingdom of Christ and of God : the gates of hell can- 
not prevail against it here ; in one feeble, praying, trusting 
soul it is more than conqueror over death and hell ; and 
when Time and Death shall have essayed in vain to touch 
it, " Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the 
kingdom of their Father ;" 1 for " This is life eternal — to 
know the only true God, and Jesus Christ." 2 

That this spiritual, heavenly, eternal kingdom was at 
hand, and with its inestimable privileges and rewards was 
open to any man to enter in, was the Gospel that Jesus 
preached. Of necessity the entrance into this kingdom 
must be through certain mental acts and experiences which 
Christ has set forth under the terms " Repent" and 
" Believe;" for, the beginning of the kingdom being 
deliverance from sin, one must needs repent, to be so de- 
livered ; and the law of the kingdom being obedience to 
Christ, one must have a sincere, implicit, submissive 
confidence in Christ in order to such obedience; hence 
faith in Jesus as the Deliverer. 

The obligation to repent and believe was declared by 
Jesus in express terms, and also under many parallel 
forms. Thus He enjoined the renunciation of worldliness, 
" How hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into 
the kingdom of God." 3 He enjoined humility as essential 
to discipleship : " Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom 
of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein." 4 He 

1 Matt. xiii. 43. 2 John xvii. 3. « Mark x. 24. * Mark x. 15. 



THE ADVANCING GLORY OF THE KINGDOM. 20 

required implicit consecration, with no mental reservation, 
no hankering after the old manner of life ; " No man having 
put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the 
kingdom of God." l The Head and Lord of the kingdom 
of God and of heaven has declared that none can be 
accounted within that kingdom except they repent and 
believe. In what sense then, can one claim to be a disciple 
of Christ, who does not comply with the uniform and ab- 
solute prerequisites to membership in His spiritual com- 
munity ? 

That conception of the kingdom of God which Jesus 
promulgated as His Gospel and sought to embody in His 
Church, has been realized with increasing grandeur and 
power through the ages, and awaits its complete develop- 
ment in the perfected state of the righteous. How vast 
and glorious is that kingdom which to-day embraces the 
millions of every kindred and tongue and people and nation, 
who coming to the Father by Jesus Christ, worship Him in 
spirit and in truth ; a commonwealth of believing souls 
owning allegiance to one Lord, and through all the diver- 
sities of race, of language, of social, civil, and ecclesiastical 
institutions, fraternizing in the love of Christ, their common 
Head, and in prayers, labors and hopes for the elevation 
of mankind through His gospel. And as other generations 
shall believe through their word, the prayer of Jesus to 
His Father shall be more and more fulfilled, "that they 
may be made perfect in one," 2 until from the dissolving 
elements of this material world, unwasted by time, un- 
hurt of death, this spiritual kingdom shall come forth 
in the glory of the Father and of His holy angels. 

1 Luke ix. 62. 8 John xvii. 23. 



y 



30 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 



NOTE: VAN OOSTERZEE ON THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

3 Dr. van Oosterzee in his before-cited work, Die Theologie des Neuen Tes- 
taments, has seized upon the idea of the kingdom of God as fundamental in the 
Theology of Christ, hut though his delineation of that kingdom is in most 
points admirable, he seems to have missed the primary spiritual conception of 
the kingdom in the Old Testament, so finely brought out by Ewald. Van Oos- 
terzee's characterization of the kingdom, (translated by Rev. J. P. Wester- 
velt, in the American Presbyterian Rtvieio for July, 1870), is as follows: "The 
Gospel that Jesus preached is a gospel of the kingdom, and that kingdom it- 
self is a moral-religious institution, which, unlimited in extent, and eternal in 
duration, in its tendency to unite, sanctify and save mankind, embraces heaven 

and earth That kingdom is (a) something new. "Since it had first come 

nigh in the fullness of time (Mat. iv. 17) it did not before exist on earth." It is 
thus not merely the continuation }f the old line, but the beginning of an order 
of things not previously seen (Luke x. 23, 24: comp. Mat. xxvi. 28). It is, 
however, now (b) something really present. Where He comes, there it also ap- 
pears with Him ; it is already in the midst of those who ask when it shall ap- 
pear (Luke xvii. 20, 21). It is by no means the same as eternal bliss : there 
consummated, it exists here in principle, and though not of the earth, yet esta- 
blished on earth, though it came not with external noise or parade. It is 
truly (c) something spiritual, that pertains to a higher domain of life than this 
visible creation. Though not exclusively yet preeminently spiritual are the 
privileges, duties and expectations of its subjects. What takes place here is 
diametrically opposite to what usually occurs in other kingdoms (Mat. xx. 25, 
28; comp. Luke xxii. 24-27), and the King declines all needless interference 
with the civil jurisdiction (Luke xii. 13, 14). Even with the idea of the Chris- 
tian church that of the kingdom of God must not be confounded. The church 
is only the external form in which the kingdom of God appears (Mat. xiii. 24- 
30; 47-50) ; that kingdom itself a spiritual society, personal membership 
with which is absolutely impossible without a renewing of the mind (Mat. 
xviii. 3). As such, it is also, as to its extent, (d) something unlimited. The 
Lord is even much more than the old prophets (comp. Isaiah ii. 2-4), raised 
above all contracted particularism, and not only at the end, but also in the 
midst, and at the beginning of His course preached the universality of the 
kingdom of God (Mat. v. 13, 14; viii. 11, 12.) Single utterances which seem 
to breathe another spirit (Mat. x. 5; xv. 24) must be explained by particular 
circumstances, and are abundantly outweighed by others (Mat. xxviii. 19; 
Luke xxiv. 47; Acts i. 8.) Nor is this surprising, since the kingdom of God 
is (e) something unending, bounded as little by time as by space. Did Moses 
and the prophets constantly point to better days, Jesus knows nothing higher 
than the kingdom which He comes to found, and predicts the complete triumph 
of His cause (Mat. xxiv. 14; xxvi. 13), and promises to remain forever with 
His disciples (xxviii.) What is thus destined for eternity is, however, devel- 
oped in time. The kingdom of God is therefore (/) something growing, which, 
in accordance with its spiritual nature, gradually works from within to its ex- 



VIEWS OF VAN OOSTERZEE. 31 

ternal manifestation, from small beginnings and with the most surprising re- 
sults (Mat. xiii. 31-33 ; Mark iv. 26-29). Therefore its servants must pray 
(Mat. vi. 9), and work (Mat. ix. 37, 38). It is indeed possible that it be taken 
away from those who ungratefully despise it (Mat. xxi. 43). Where it is, how- 
ever, sought and found, there it is (g) something inestimably glorious and 
blessed (Mat. xiii. 44-46; xxii. 2); a blessedness tne want of which cannot be 
made good (Luke xiii. 25-30) but the possession of which is to be desired above 
all things, as pledge of every other blessing (Mat. vi. 33)." 

The points at which this otherwise complete synthesis of Christ's doctrine of 
the Kingdom might be amended are a and c — so far as relates to the Church. 
That the Kingdom of God as preached by Christ was new in respect of the 
clearness, fulness, and intensity of spiritual manifestation, is undoubtedly true; 
but that the devout recognition of God as the only Lord and Deliverer, and a 
loyal devotion to Him in faith and love, were primary elements in the concep- 
tion of that kingdom in the Old Testament, has been shown in pp. 20-23 of the 
foregoing chapter. This view is necessary both to the unity of Biblical truth 
and to the clear understanding of Christ's teaching. He used the phrase 
"kingdom of God" without defining it; the language was familiar to every 
Jew, but Jesus sought to revive and restore its true meaning, and this was the 
tone of His parables and similes showing that the kingdom was not of this 
world. He did not claim to set up a new kingdom — " Think not that I am 
eome to destroy the law or the prophets : I am not come to destroy, but to ful- 
fil, " ir\-qpSi<rai ) to fill up, to fill out, in their true meaning. 

The very germ of the kingdom of God given in the covenant with Abraham, 
contained this doctrine of Christ : not only should one " great and mighty na- 
tion " spring from Abraham — thus giving to the covenant an outward symboli- 
cal form — but " all the nations of the earth should be blessed in Him :" and for 
the fulfilment of this, Abraham was required to walk before the Lord in per- 
fectness or uprightness of soul, and to " command his children and his house- 
hold after him, to keep the way of the Lord" (Gen. xvii. 1; xviii. 18, 19). 
The coming of God as a Saviour to be received in trust and obedience, was 
from the first the essential idea of the kingdom of God: and Christ's doctrine 
of the kingdom was not "new" as to the conception of it. Dr. van Oosterzee 
is nearer the truth when he says, " The word of Moses and the prophets is 
taken up by Jesus, continued, supplemented, completed in such a manner, that 
the old in His hand acquires a new aspect, and the new, rightly viewed, ap- 
pears to be nothing else than the ripened fruit of the old." 

Moreover, the true Church of Christ, one in Himself and in His Father, is 
identical with the true kingdom of God. The external visible Church, like the 
Jewish theocracy, may shadow forth that kingdom, yet representing i| jOnly im- 
perfectly and in part : but the true Church of Christ is that " spiritual Society 
personal membership with which is absolutely impossible without a renewing 
of the mind :" it is the kingdom as Jeremiah and Ezekiel saw it, the members 
of which all "know the Lord," and have His law "in their inward parts." This 
primary conception of the kingdom is the key to the whole theology of Christ. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

THE NEW BIRTH. 

Foe entering the kingdom of God, that which is 
wanted is " not learning but life ; and life must begin by 
birth" l This was the doctrine of Jesus in His reply to 
Nicodemus, emphasized with a marked solemnity and 
authority of utterance, " Verily, verily, I say unto thee, 
except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom 
of God.' 72 An earnest, devout Israelite, expecting the 
Messiah, and impressed with the divine attestation of 
Jesus through the miracles that He wrought, Nicodemus 
sought instruction of this marvellous prophet, whom he 
acknowledged as "a teacher come from God." Jesus, 
anticipating his question concerning the signs and require- 
ments of the Messiah's kingdom, went directly to the 
topic that was in the mind of his visitor, though in a way 
as startling as it was decisive. Nicodemus had said, 
" Thou art a teacher come from God," and stood expecting 
some new doctrine. Jesus said to him, " My teaching is 
not of doing and leaving undone, but of becoming ; so 
that it is not new works to be done, but a new man to do 
them, not simply the living otherwise, but the being new- 
born." 3 Here plainly was a doctrine of regeneration 
taught by the founder of Christianity as fundamental to 
His system. What does it signify? What did Christ 
Himself intend by being born again ? The doctrine lies 
in the exegesis of this single phrase. 

At the outset Nicodemus mistook its meaning, and 

1 Alford in loc. 2 Juhn iii. 3. 3 Luther, Gomm. in loc. 

32 



THE PROSELYTE WAS "BORN AGAIN." 33 

halted at the words in their literal physical sense. If his 
reply to Jesus is to be taken seriously, one is amazed at 
his dulness ; if he meant to cavil about the matter, one is 
no less amazed at his frivolity. But neither stupidity nor 
caviling can be fairly inferred from his question, " How 
can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the 
second time into his mother's womb, and be born ?" x Mco- 
demus was a " master in Israel," a man of intelligence and 
education, at least upon questions of religion, and there- 
fore could not have put such a question literally. At 
the same time, his whole manner in coming to Jesus, and 
the tone of his conversation, showed that he was not a 
caviler but a sincere seeker after truth. Not only did 
he testify his respect for Jesus in coming to Him in this 
manner for instruction, and addressing Him as a prophet, 
but on subsequent occasions he used his official position 
for His protection, and even exhibited the devotion of a 
disciple. 2 His perplexity arose from his conceiving of 
himself as already in the kingdom of God, by virtue of 
his birth in the lineage of Abraham ; while, in common 
with the body of his people, he looked to the coming of 
the Messiah for a higher assertion of that kingdom and its 
privileges for their benefit. How then could a son of 
Abraham be born a second time into the kingdom of 
God? 

A Gentile who embraced the Jewish faith was admitted 
into the Jewish commonwealth by baptism, and was said 
to be born again. It was a phrase common among the 
Rabbis, " The Gentile that is made a proselyte, and the 
servant that is made free, behold he is like a child new- 
born." The one explains the other; the servant made 
free began a new kind of life, could use his powers and 
time in a new way, was master of himself; and a heathen 
brought to the knowledge of the true God and received 

1 John iii. 4. 2 j h n v ji # 50 . x \ Xt 39. 

3 



34 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

into the commonwealth of His worshipers, began a new 
life, had new thoughts, new feelings, new principles, new 
aims, new associations, new hopes, was like one born into 
a new world. Such was the theory of the school of 
doctors to which Mcodemus belonged, concerning the 
receiving a Gentile into the household of Israel ; but for 
themselves, they had so far lost the spiritual essence and 
life of their religion as to have taken up the conceit that, 
" it was enough for them to have been of the seed of 
Abraham, or the stock of Israel, to make them fit subjects 
for the kingdom of heaven." Nicodemus not only con- 
sidered himself a member of that kingdom, but felt his 
consequence as one of its chief men, a ruler and teacher, a 
member of the Sanhedrim, the high court in the Jewish 
kingdom of heaven. He had hoped to gain from Jesus 
some new light touching 'the coming glories of that king- 
dom under the reign of the Messiah. But when Jesus 
laid down the broad proposition, that a new birth was 
indispensable for every one, in order to enter the kingdom, 
Nicodemus was utterly confounded. He a proud master 
in that kingdom could understand how a poor, ignorant, 
unholy dog of a Gentile would require to be made over 
before he could aspire to the privileges of the Messiah's 
kingdom; but for himself this seemed as incredible, almost 
as impossible, as for an old man to be born a second time. 
" How can I, who was born of the seed of Abraham, and 
hence born into the kingdom of God, put myself outside 
of that kingdom, into the position of a Gentile, and be 
born again in order to get within the kingdom?" So 
ignorant was he of that spiritual life which constitutes the 
kingdom of God within the soul, that the requirements of 
Jesus seemed to him as difficult to imagine as the physical 
impossibility of a second birth. In this respect Nico- 
demus was a type of those who place the seat of religion 
in the physical nature — making it a quality or condition 



35 

of the brain, the senses, the temperament, a result of 
inheritance, dispositions and tastes, or a product of ma- 
terial forms and observances. Such notions of religion 
are completely dispelled by the answer of Christ, showing 
that His meaning was not to be looked for in the region 
of the physical. It is not man as a physiological subject 
that requires to be born anew, but man in his spiritual 
nature, his psychological frames and feelings ;— the new 
birth is not of the flesh but of the Spirit. 

Nevertheless this is a birth ; for though the change is 
neither in the organic constitution of the man, nor in the 
substance and powers of the soul, it is yet a change as 
thorough and radical as if one were made over or born 
again. In respect of that spiritual life, that life of obedi- 
ence, faith and love which is the inner experience of the 
kingdom of God, one must become altogether a new man. 
This is the strict import of the phrase " born again." To 
be literally born a second time would not fill out all its 
meaning ; it denotes the complete renovation of the inner 
man, and must be understood either as being renewed 
from the very beginning, or as being born " from above," 
by that influence from on high which is afterwards de- 
scribed as being " born of the Spirit :" — rather, both these 
ideas are combined in the one phrase, the former being 
prominent in the first instance, and the latter brought in 
for explanation. One must begin his life as altogether a 
new thing, and this he will do only under an influence 
" from above." 

If the kingdom of heaven is realized through the 
coming of God to the soul as its Deliverer, if the humble, 
willing, grateful receiving of Christ by the soul as its 
Saviour from sin and the Lord of its affections and desires 
be the kingdom of heaven within that soul, then is it no 
marvel that Jesus said " Ye must be born again ;" for be- 
fore the consciousness of God's presence as its Saviour and 



36 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

the acceptance of God as its Sovereign can -spring up 
within a heart which has been the home of evil thoughts 
and the nursery of evil deeds, it must undergo a trans- 
formation as wondrous and complete as a new birth. If 
also the kingdom of heaven be that community of loving 
souls which, with no worldly marks of distinction — blood, 
wealth, race, rank — are joined in one through faith in 
Christ as Saviour and obedience to Him as Lord, then is it 
no marvel that for being registered in that kingdom, Jesus 
said " Ye must be born again." The proud, self-willed, 
self-righteous heart must be converted, — made over, as it 
were — and become in submission, love, and obedience, 
even as a little child. If, moreover, the kingdom of heav- 
en in its final consummation, denotes the visible presence 
and glory of Christ enthroned in the midst of those He has 
recovered unto God, then can it be no marvel that, for 
admission to that innumerable company of angels and 
the spirits of just men made perfect, Jesus said " Ye 
must be born again:" and, "Except your righteousness 
shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Phari- 
sees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of 
heaven." 1 

In view of the coming of that Kingdom by and 
through Himself, of its spiritual nature as a process or ex- 
perience within the soul by which God is seen in Christ as 
a present Saviour, and accepted as Lord of the conscience, 
the will, and the affections, in view of the holy character 
of this kingdom in its laws of purity and love, in its privi- 
leges of fellowship with God, and the coming of the 
Father and the Son to take up their abode with its true 
subjects, Jesus called upon men to repent and believe the 
gospel. And it was this same conception of the kingdom 
as inward, spiritual, pure, — a holy kingdom in a holy 
heart — that led Jesus to declare to Mcodemus, as the start- 

1 Matt. v. 20. 



THE REQUIREMENT NATURAL. 3"f 

ing point of His religious system, " Except a man be born 
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God !" 

This requirement answers to the personal wishes of 
every man in his better moods. Could one live his life 
over again in the light of his own experience, he would 
guard against mistakes, improve opportunities, get advan- 
tages, now all past beyond recall ! Every one sees how he 
could make a better thing of life, if it were given him to 
begin anew. In most cases, however, such fancied im- 
provements would affect only the outward conditions and 
circumstances of life; — one would obtain a better educa- 
tion, another would improve his chances in business, or 
make some lucrative speculation in real estate, another 
would form a more advantageous or congenial alliance ; 
and so, in one particular or other, most men would like to 
live their lives over for the sake of bettering their condi- 
tion ; would like to be " born again " with different sur- 
roundings of culture, means, opportunities, so as to start in 
life at a different level, with better light and guidance or 
better prospects of success. Here and there some humble, 
honest soul longs to live life over upon grounds of char- 
acter — that he might make himself a better man. 

Now what Christ requires as the condition of entering 
into the kingdom of God is that we shall do thoroughly 
this very thing for which we vaguely long; that we be- 
gin new lives, not in respect of circumstances, but of char- 
acter; that we make earnest work of this — not changing 
our place and condition, nor simply changing our manners 
or morals in the way of an outward reformation — but 
that in this change we go to the very bottom of things, 
and in the principles, motives, and aims that make up life 
become altogether new, starting upon this new idea of 
living from the very beginning, just as though we w T ere 
born into another state of existence. This it is to be 
born again — there is an inward, deep, radical change in 



38 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

the whole conception and spirit of life as toward both 
God and man. 

Christ based His requirement of the new birth upon the 
wickedness of the human heart. Had condition and cir- 
cumstances alone stood in the way of admicsion into the 
kingdom of heaven, this teacher sent from God would 
doubtless have shown how the difficulty could be removed 
by education or the progress of society. Were admission 
into that kingdom a question of morals alone — as these af- 
fect society and the outer life — Christ would have preached 
a reformation in manners. But as John the Baptist had 
foretold of Him, He "laid the axe unto the root of the 
trees, and every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit 
must be hewn down and cast into the fire." x To Him who 
knew what was in man, bad fruit was a sign of a corrupt 
tree, bad morals or an evil life of a wicked heart; and 
therefore, as He Himself preached, the tree must be made 
good that the fruit may be good, the heart must be made 
good that it may bring forth good things ; 2 and so because 
of the wickedness of the heart, men must be born unto a 
new life before they can see the kingdom of God. 

The preaching of Christ dealt with men not simply as 
ignorant and needing light, as erring and needing guid- 
ance, but as sinful, and requiring to be made over anew 
from the very foundation of character. "They that be 
whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. . . 
I am not come to. call the righteous but sinners to re- 
pentance;" 3 that is, to such as deemed themselves good 
enough by nature, or able to develop a righteous character 
by methods of their own, Jesus had no mission ; He could be 
of service only to those who were conscious that they were 
sinners, and as such had need of salvation. The starting- 
point in His whole work was the recognition of sin as 
seated in the heart, and hence demanding a new beginning 

1 Matt. iii. 10. 2 Matt. xii. 33, 35. 3 Matt. ix. 12, 13. 



ALL MEN ARE SINNERS. 3& 

in respect of all that constitutes moral character. In the 
externals of religion the Scribes and Pharisees were the 
most religious of the Jews, — strict and scrupulous in 
prayers, tithes and alms, and in all the services that the 
law of Moses required of subjects of the kingdom of God; 
yet Jesus did not recognize them as within that kingdom 
or as having any sort of claim upon it. He charged them 
with a corruption of heart for which no ceremonial right- 
eousness could atone: "Ye are like unto whited sepulchres, 
which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full 
of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness: — ye out- 
wardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full 
of hypocrisy and iniquity." l These were men of fair out- 
ward morality and apparent righteousness — the best ave- 
rage specimens of character among the Jews — yet because 
of the wickedness of their heanrts they needed to be born 
again. And the charge of inward depravity was by no 
means confined to those whom Christ accused of hypocrisy 
in religion. He brought this accusation against all alike. 
The Jews, for instance, despised the Galileans as hardly 
capable of being included within the theocratic family — 
their very name was a term of opprobrium — and some of 
this class having been put to death for crime or killed in a 
riot near the temple, so that their blood was mingled with 
the sacrifices, the people told Jesus of this as proof of a 
divine judgment for their awful depravity. But He an- 
swered, "Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners 
above all the Galileans because they suffered such things? 
I tell you Nay ; but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise 
perish." 2 A tower near the pool of Siloam fell and killed 
eighteen persons, and the Jews interpreted this as a judg- 
ment upon the victims for some extraordinary wickedness; 
but Jesus said as before, "Think ye that they were sin- 
ners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you 

1 Matf. xxiii. 27, 28. 2 Luke xiii. 2, 3. 



40 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

Nay : but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." 1 
He thus taught that, although particular calamities are not 
to be taken as proof of special criminality on the part of 
the sufferers, yet suffering stands so closely related to sin, 
that all men are equally liable to suffer, because all are 
alike involved in the habit of sinning, and are substan- 
tially upon an equality with respect to that sinfulness of 
heart which calls for repentance. To the Jews who boast- 
ed that as the seed of Abraham they were the children of 
God, Jesus said, "Ye are of your Father the devil, and 
the lusts of your Father ye will do;" 2 thus charging them 
with complete alienation of heart from God, and alliance 
with the spirit of darkness and evil. And again, He de- 
clared the source of all evil in the world to be the sinful 
heart that is in man; "for from within, out of the heart of 
men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, mur- 
ders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, 
an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness; all these evil 
things come from within, and defile the man." 3 Not only 
do overt deeds of vice and crime proceed from an evil 
heart, but together with the grossest outward acts, and as 
included in the same condemnation, are enumerated pride, 
envy, covetousness, evil thoughts; all these are hidden 
within the heart, and these "defile the man" before God. 
Manifold as are the forms of evil in the world, there is but 
one common fountain of evil, and that is the heart of man. 
There is no mistaking the judgment of Jesus Christ 
upon that point: — the doctrine of the universal sinfulness 
of mankind lay at the basis of His scheme of renovation, 
and His doctrine of the necessity of a new birth grew logi- 
cally out of that : — both are fundamental in His theology. 
The terms of admission into the kingdom of heaven are 
the same for all; the reformation that is demanded is not 
renouncing one's more flagrant or conspicuous sins, lop- 

1 Luke xiii. 4. 2 John viii. 44. » Mark vii. 21-23. 



THE NATURE OF REPENTANCE. 41 

ping off individual vices or habits, but transforming the 
sinful heart into a new and holy heart. " Now do ye 
Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the plat- 
ter ; but your inward part is full of ravening and wicked- 
ness." 1 

It is not with sins alone that the gospel of Christ has to 
do, but with Sin, and directly with the seat and source of 
sin, the Heart of Man. 2 

Keeping in mind that the kingdom of God consists in 
recognizing God as the Saviour and receiving Him into the 
heart as its Lord, one can no longer marvel that whoever 
would attain unto the consciousness of that kingdom with- 
in himself must be born again; so changed in heart — 
changed from an evil, sinful heart to a heart that loves 
God and seeks after holiness — so changed in his fundamen- 
tal conceptions and principles of life, and in all his several 
purposes, motives, and actions, that he shall be throughout 
another man. Such was the doctrine of Jesus ; the fair in- 
terpretation of His sayings teaches nothing less than this. 
To have the fruit good, the tree must first be made good. 

Practically, as matter of experience, the new birth includes 
and requires repentance and the renunciation of sin. John 
the Baptist proclaimed the coming of Jesus by preaching 
" Repent ye : for the kingdom of heaven is at hand : and 
many were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their 
sins." 3 When Jesus began to preach He gave the same 
exhortation : " Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at 
hand." The repenting enjoined by the gospel is literally 
to change one's mind — fierauoiire, review your course 
and turn from it; — it implies reflection, compunction, 
and regret in the review of the past, but these frames 
and experiences do not constitute the fact of repent- 
ance ; the essence of that is the change of mind to 
which reflection and compunction lead — a change of the 

1 Luke xi. 39. 2 Matt. xii. 33. s Matt. iii. 2, 6. 



42 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

whole mind, in desire, feeling, thought, purpose, action, a 
change in the whole spirit and intent of life as toward 
God and His truth, and all that aifects character ; and in- 
asmuch as the heart has yielded itself to carnal, selfish, 
worldly desires and aims — in a word, is sinful — it must 
repent of this, renounce this way of life as the first step 
toward the kingdom of God. Hence Christ insisted so 
much that if any man would become His disciple, he 
must begin by denying himself — must put self down in 
order to set up Christ as his king.. " No man can serve 
two masters : ye cannot serve God and mammon." l In 
being born again one is not passive ; but in becoming 
spiritually a new man, every one has this to do for him- 
self — to repent of and renounce his own sin. 

But the new birth is more than repenting. One may 
have contrition for sin, be ashamed of it, resolve truly to 
forsake it, and yet through habit or weakness return to it 
again and again ; to be born anew implies that repentance is 
confirmed and the renunciation of sin made sure by bring- 
ing into the soul a new life-power from the Spirit of God. 
To purify the heart from evil is the vital principle of the 
new life, and its effectual operation will constitute the per- 
fection of that life ; — " Blessed are the pure in heart, for 
they shall see God." 2 Repentance alone does not purify. 
To be sorry for sin is not in itself the same thing as to be- 
come holy ; and since sinful desires have ruled the heart, 
and sin has gained possession of the imagination, the 
reason, the inclinations, the will, — of the whole man as a 
thinking, feeling, acting soul — one's own resolution, how- 
ever sincere, one's own decision, however earnest, proves 
too weak to eradicate the propensity to evil. Therefore 
must we be re-enforced from above ; we should never suc- 
ceed in purifying ourselves — a for that which is born of the 
flesh is flesh" — and our best purposes of amendment would 

i Luke xvi. 13. 2 Matt. v. 8. 



BORN OF THE SPIRIT. 43 

begin under the limitations of weakness and the taint of 
old carnal habits. Spiritual life within us must be born of 
the Spirit of God. Christ has taught us that one feature 
of this new birth is humility — casting away pride and 
self-will and taking a lowly place as a sinner before the 
holy God; — " Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the 
kingdom of heaven :" l " Except ye be converted, and be- 
come as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom 
of heaven." 2 The Jewish Rabbis had a saying, "A 
penitent man must be like one to-day new-born." 

But Christ said further, " Blessed are the pure in heart, 
for they shall see God." 3 Now the humbling is our proper 
act ; we can and must abase ourselves before God, confes- 
sing our sins ; but for the purifying we need help from the 
Spirit of all purity, the Holy Spirit. This Jesus taught 
specifically as the being born from above, — the normal 
signification of avivdsu, which is veiled under the idea of a 
new birth. The two ideas are strictly correlative. 

John had said, " I baptize you with water unto repent- 
ance " 4 — the baptism being a symbol of the washing away 
of sins, which they who came to be baptized professed to 
have repented of and forsaken. Yet so far was John from 
ascribing to baptism a regenerative virtue, that he spoke 
of the repentance which it signified as but preparatory to a 
work of divine purification within the soul, and added 
that in order to the full realization of the kingdom, 
through its power and majesty possessing the entire in- 
tellectual and moral nature, Jesus must "baptize them 
with the Holy Ghost and with fire " 5 — truly and ef- 
fectually cleanse them by an inward process of purifying. 
And so Christ Himself taught, " Except a man be born of 
water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the king- 
dom of God." By the act of baptism one professes him- 
self new-born as to the purpose of" his heart, in renouncing 

1 Matt. v. 3. * Matt, xviii. 3. 8 Mat. v. 8. 4 Matt. iii. 11. 5 Matt. iii. 11. 



44 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

his sins ; but unless that purpose has itself sprung from 
the quickening power of the Holy Spirit, and is sustained 
and energized by that, it will prove as evanescent as the 
water applied in the outward rite. The real birth is of 
the Spirit. 

The complete doctrine of the Holy Spirit as taught by 
Christ will be unfolded in a subsequent chapter. L Just here 
we are concerned simply with His declaration of the neces- 
sity of the Holy Spirit to the effective regeneration of the 
soul. And the point of inquiry is not the mode of the Spirit's 
operation in the new birth, which Christ did not explain, 
and which philosophy can but conjecture ; but the necessity 
of this supernatural work, which Jesus made fundamental 
in His scheme of salvation. That necessity arises from the 
fact that sin, having gained control over the moral powers 
and affections of the man, holds him in subjection, like 
" a strong man armed ; " conscience is dormant, religious 
sensibility is sluggish, the will itself is chained by habit 
to a course of evil, and paralyzed in its movements toward 
the good ; but the Spirit of God convincing of sin, 
awakening the sense of guilt in view of the righteousness 
of God, and of condemnation in view of the coming judg- 
ment, breaks the spell of evil, restores to their normal 
action the moral faculties whose service of evil had become 
a second nature, and by the power of truth renews and 
sanctifies the soul. 2 This action of the divine Spirit upon 
the human Christ likened to the wind, which is marked 
by its effects. " The wind is the emblem of concealed " 
power, perceptible to observation, but inscrutable to the 
understanding:" 3 "The wind bloweth where it listeth, 
and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell 
whence it cometh, and whither it goeth : so is every one 
that is born of the Spirit." 4 Nicodemus, again perplexed 

1 See Chap. XII. 2 John xvi. 8, 13 ; xvii. 17. 3 Stier, " Words of Jesus," 
in loc. * John iii. 8. 



PROFESSOR PHELPS ON SAUL ; S CONVERSION. 45 

and confounded, exclaimed, " How can these things be ? " 
But Jesus maintained a reserve that not even the eager 
questioning of His own disciples could penetrate, concern- 
ing those " heavenly things " that lie beyond human dis- 
covery, and that philosophy of the supernatural which 
the highest intellects have essayed in vain. * He held up 
the fact of the new birth as proof of the working of 
a divine power within the soul, which like the wind, is 
invisible as a cause, yet recognized by the force, the sud- 
denness, or the magnitude of its effects. " So is every one 
that is born of the Spirit." 

The doctrine of Jesus was that " the experience of the 
new birth is suggestive of a supernatural cause. Take, for 
example, the conversion of the Apostle Paul. Look at it 
as a fact in the history of mind. Set aside, as irrelevant 
to the object before us, whatever was miraculous in the 
events of that journey to Damascus. Make no account of 
the supernatural light, the voice from heaven, the shock 
of blindness. Consider not the means, but the manner of 
that change in the man. Mark its impetuosity. Note 
the instantaneousness of that arrest of passion. It is like 
a torrent frozen in mid-air. Observe the revulsion of 
feeling. Threatening and slaughter give place to convic- 
tion of sin. Malignity is supplanted by prayer. Perceive 
the revolution of character in that instant of trembling 
and astonishment. Call it regeneration, conversion, new 
birth, or by titles more comely to philosophic taste ; call 
it what you will, it is a change of character. The Phari- 
see becomes a penitent. The persecutor becomes a 
Christian. The murderer becomes a saint. For aught 
that appears in the narrative, the change is almost like a 
flash of lightning. How brief the colloquy which pro- 
claims the whole of it ! " Who art thou, Lord ? " "I am 
Jesus." " Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ? " We 

1 John iii. 12, Acts i. 7. 



46 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

do not know that mind can move more rapidly than this 
in such a juncture of its history, and yet move intelli- 
gently. Then put together the two lives of the man — 
his life before, and his life after this convulsive crisis. 
Saul and Paul join hands over this invisible gulf, as over 
the river of death — the same being, yet two different men. 
His character has experienced a change like the transmu- 
tation of metals. Take these as facts of sober mental 
history, and do they not seem to speak the presence of a 
supernatural power? If the world could come to that 
ninth chapter of the Acts as to a modern discovery in 
psychology, philosophic systems would grow out of it; 
all futile in explanation of the process, but all confessing 

the reality and the divinity of the thirg The 

world, from the beginning until now, has inferred the 
presence of supernal agencies in the mental changes of 
men, from less conclusive evidences than those furnished 
by such a conversion. Socrates believed — and philosophy 
has revered him for the faith — that an invisible spirit 
swayed his thought, and he believed it on less evidence 
than this. Napoleon believed and poetry has discovered 
piety in the faith — that supernatural power intervened in 
his destiny ; and he believed it on less evidence than this. 
It has passed into the cant of literature to ascribe inspira- 
tion, even divinity, to great minds on infinitely less 
evidence than this." 1 

That one must be born of the Spirit as Christ taught 
this necessity, is a doctrine full of encouragement, since 
what is presented is not a metaphysical abstraction, but 
the fact of help, present help, efficient help, divine help in 
becoming a new man. One who has been long becalmed 
at sea, or driven by contrary winds, when at last a favor- 



1 The New Birth, or the Work of the Holy Spirit, by Austin Phelps, D.D., Pro- 
fessor in Andover Theological Seminary. The whole subject of regeneration 
is here discussed in a masterly manner. 



need of Christ's coming. 47 

ing gale springs up, makes haste to catch it, puts his helm 
to the course indicated by the breeze and spreads his 
canvass so as to secure the full benefit of the wind, with- 
out once troubling himself with theories of meteorology, or 
demanding how the wind is brought to act upon him. So 
one driven to and fro by the passions of life, longing and 
sighing for peace, may be suddenly conscious that some 
heavenly breeze is floating over him, and if he will but 
spread the wings of faith and prayer he shall catch its 
gracious influence and be wafted into rest. What matters 
it that he does not know how this strange new feeling has 
come over him, nor why it so excites him to hope and 
zeal? There are realities in the spiritual world whose 
certainty is not impaired for lack of our philosophy, and 
it is enough to know that the Holy Spirit comes from 
God, and comes to him. Yielding his repentant, willing 
soul to the renewing, sanctifying power of the truth, he is 
"born of the Spirit," and that is salvation from sin and 
death. 

There was no need that Jesus should come from heaven 
to teach us that we have sinned ; that, alas, we know, and 
sometimes feel with bitter upbraiding. There was no 
need that He should come from heaven to teach us that we 
must repent ; this we know by the judgment and reproof 
of our own moral sense. But when one as in the anguish 
of despair cries out, How shall I change my will, break 
off from sin, and truly become a better man ? — to answer 
that question, it was needful that Jesus the Christ should 
come from God and say, " Believe on Me ; receive the 
Holy Ghost." The Spirit convinces of sin, and the very 
conviction that prompts that almost despairing cry may be 
the beginning of His work of renewal — that cry, the birth- 
cry of that soul. The Spirit sanctifies through the truth ; 
and this very truth of His own presence to convince, 
renew, and help, He may be pressing upon the soul as its 



48 THE THEOLOGY OF CHEIST. 

J 

hope in the dark struggle with guilt and fear. If the 
heart will but open to this higher influence, it shall be 
lifted up to God, and sustained where all its own resolves 
would fail. How shall one become a new man? How 
find God and heaven as a reality, a possession ? Let him 
do his known duty ; do that which he himself, and only 
he, can do ; let him repent of his sins, and give up the 
purpose of sinning ! Then in the spirit of a little child, 
let him look to Christ for grace to help, to sanctify, and 
save. In that moment of penitence and faith, casting 
away his old self that he may cast himself wholly upon 
Christ, he is born of the Spirit, and enters into the 
kingdom of God. 



CHAPTER Y. 

SALVATION MADE POSSIBLE THROUGH THE DEATH OF 

CHRIST. 

One can certify himself of his repentance ; can he also 
be certified that his repentance is accepted of God ? One 
may be conscious of his dependence upon divine power to 
strengthen him against the evil that is within him and 
around him ; but how shall he make sure that this aid will 
be given him in his extremity? Has God manifested a 
concern for our salvation ? — promised anything, done any- 
thing, to assure us that sin repented of shall be forgiven, 
that the new life shall be inwrought and sustained in our 
souls ? Upon the answer to these questions all hope and 
courage for reformation must depend. The answer is 
given in that thrilling, that sublime announcement: "God 
so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, 
that whosoever believe th in Him should not perish, but 
have everlasting life/* l For this very purpose Jesus 
Christ came into the world ; for this very purpose He lived 
in the flesh ; for this very purpose He died upon the cross 
— that through faith in the sinless man there lifted up in 
triumph over sin and death, we might receive not new life 
only, but life everlasting. All this did Christ Himself in- 
clude in that saying to Nicodemus which linked the sym- 
bolism of the Old Testament with His personal history : 
r As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so 
must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believ- 

1 John iii. 16. For a oritioal discussion of this text see Chap. vi. 

4 49 



50 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 



eth in Hira should not perish, but have eternal life." 1 
" Should not perish !" « Must be lifted up !" There was, 
then, upon the whole race a liability to perish, which could 
be averted only by the death of the Son of Man. Surely 
these words of Jesus cannot mean less than this — that His 
death upon the cross sustained a necessary and vital rela- 
tion to the deliverance of men from a doom that is here 
contrasted with everlasting life. The question is not one 
of philosophy, but solely one of interpretation. 

What, then, did Jesus intend by the " lifting up " of the 
Son of Man ? Upon two other occasions He used the same 
expression, and a comparison of these will furnish a key to 
its meaning. In a dispute with the Pharisees concern- 
ing His divine mission, Jesus, knowing their murderous in- 
tent towards Him, said unto them, " When ye have lifted 
up the Son of Man, then shall ye know that I am He." 2 
This could not have referred to the glorification of Christ, 
His being received up into heaven after death, for the verb 
is not passive, but denotes the act of the Jews in lifting 
Him up — b(pd)orjze. Hence it can only refer to His being 
crucified by their hands. That purpose to have His life, 
which He knew was raging in their hearts, and which He 
more than once referred to in this same discussion, would 
be accomplished in lifting Him up upon the cross. 

Again, as He drew near the close of life, in setting forth 
the destined triumph of His gospel, He said : " And I, if I 
be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me." 3 
The evangelist adds the comment, " This He said, signify- 
ing what death He should die." That the interpretation 
given by John was the true one is clear from the whole 
argument of the context. Jesus had likened Himself to 
the -corn of wheat cast into the ground, " which if it die, 

1 John iii. 14, 15. 2 John viii. 28 : compare v. 37 : " Ye seek to kill me." 
8 John xii. 32. 



THE MEANING OF "LIFTED UP." 51 

bringeth forth much fruit f 1 iu like manner would the Son 
of Man be glorified in the multitude of disciples that His 
being lifted up would draw unto Him. The Jews clearly 
understood Him by this to refer to His death, for they an- 
swered with evident surprise, " We have heard out of the 
law that Christ abideth forever" — their notion of the Mes- 
siah was that He would live and reign uninterruptedly in 
this world : — " how sayest Thou then, ' The Son of Man 
must be lifted up ?' " The being lifted up is clearly 
opposed to the idea of abiding forever, and hence it signi- 
fies death as contrasted with an uninterrupted life. 

The very manner of Christ's death is hinted by this 
phrase: "If I be lifted up from the earth." There is 
much plausibility in the suggestion that, as our Lord spoke 
in the Aramaean tongue — then the dialect of the common 
people in Israel —he used the Chaldee term z'Jcaph (Ezra 
vi. 11) or tah-lah (Esther vii. 9, 10, ix. 13) which the 
Jews would understand to mean to hang up a criminal on 
a post, or adapting this to the Roman custom — to crucify. 2 
Dr. E. Riggs, in his manual of the Chaldee language, de- 
fines z'lzaph, " to suspend, as a malefactor on a gallows or 
cross." Euerst gives the meaning — "to raise up, as a 
cross, to hang up ;" and tah-ldh to hang up on a stake, 
for capital punishment. Thus Haman was "lifted up" 
upon the gallows ; and the same penalty was threatened by 
Darius for mutilating a royal edict: ""Whosoever shall 
alter this decree, let timber be pulled down from his house, 
and being i set up ? let him be hanged thereon." 3 

The Chaldee, which belonged to one of the three grand 
divisions of the Shemitish languages, 4 was the language of 
Babylonia in the time of the Jewish captivity. That the 
Jews there acquired it, is evident from remains of the 

1 John xii. 24. 2 Olshausen, Com. John, iii. 14. 

3 Ezra vi. 11. 4 Aramaean, Hebrew, and Arabic ; the Chaldee and the Syriac 
were sub-divisions of Aramaean, — East and West. 



52 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

dialect in the books of Ezra and Daniel • * and on their return 
to Palestine they brought this with them as their vernacular 
tongue. By degrees the name Hebrew was transferred to 
this Babylonish dialect : but " in the time of Christ, the 
popular speech of the Jews in Palestine was not pure 
Hebrew, but Syro-Chaldaic. Accordingly, imitations and 
literal translations of numerous ordinary expressions of 
that language must have been introduced into Jewish 
Greek/ 72 The Greek language which, from the time of 
Alexander the Great, gradually won its way in the pro- 
vinces of Asia and Africa that were subjected to Mace- 
donian rule, so far as it was used by the Jews of Palestine, 
was affected both in its idioms and in the meaning of par- 
ticular words by the Chaldee dialect. That Christ habit- 
ually used this dialect is highly probable ; at least, the fact 
that in His death-agony upon the cross He cried out in 
this tongue, 3 shows that it was most natural to Him. 
Spoken in that tongue, the expression " to be lifted up " 
could have no doubtful reference to the manner of His 
death. 

But this interpretation of the phrase does not depend 
upon the supposition that it was originally uttered in the 
Chaldee tongue. Both the Jews at large and the particu- 
lar disciples of Jesus understood it in this sense : and their 
enthusiastic dream of an immortal reign of the Messiah 
upon earth was confounded by the declaration that the Son 
of Man must be lifted up from the earth. And as this lift- 
ing up would be compassed by the malicious machinations 
of the Pharisees, who sought to kill Him, it could only 
refer to the lifting up on the cross. 4 Thus from the very 
opening of His ministry, Jesus knew not only that He 

1 Ezra iv. 8 ; vi. 18 ; vii. 12, 26 ; Daniel ii. 4 ; vii. 28. 2 Winer, Gram- 
mar of the New Testament Diction, See. Ill; also, Riggs, Manual of the 
Chaldee Language, Sec. II. Bleek, Einleitung in das N. T. % 21-36. 

8 Matthew xxvii. 4@. Eli, Eli, lama sabaehthani. * John viii. 28, 37. 



Christ's death the object of faith. 53 

should die, but that He should be crucified; that His 
death would not take place in the course of nature, but by 
violence ; and this not by stoning, as Stephen afterwards 
.was stoned by the mob, nor by beheading, as John the Bap- 
tist suffered, but by being lifted up upon the cross. That 
Jesus distinctly foreknew the manner of His death is plain 
from His sayings to the disciples recorded by Matthew : 1 
"From that time forth begaa Jesus to show unto His disci' 
pies how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many 
things of the elders, and chief priests and scribes, and he 
hilled, and raised again the third day." " Behold, we go 
up to Jerusalem ; and the Son of Man shall be betrayed 
unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes, and they shall 
condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the 
Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify Him." 

But this death would possess a virtue that can be 
affirmed of none other. Christ announced to Nicodemus 
a mystery greater even than that of the new birth, when 
He said that His crucifixion was appointed as necessary 
to the salvation of mankind : — " The Son of Man must be 
lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not 
perish, but have eternal life." 2 The provision of sal- 
vation was directly connected with, and vitally dependent 
upon the crucifixion. 

That salvation comes through believing in Christ, that 
faith in the Son of Man is the condition of life, was taught 
by Jesus under every possible form of expression. " He 
that believeth on Me hath everlasting life." 3 " If ye be- 
lieve not that I am He " — the Messiah, the sent of God, 
" ye shall die in your sins." 4 " He that believeth and is 
baptized shall be saved ; but he that believeth not shall be 
damned." 5 But the text under consideration goes beyond 
the fact of believing to its ground, and connects the act of 

1 Matthew xvi. 21 ; xx. 18. 2 John iii. 15. 3 John vi. 47. 4 John viii. 24. 
5 Mark xvi. 16. 



54 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

faith directly with the death of Christ as a necessary pro- 
vision for the salvation that comes by faith : — " The Son 
of Man must be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in 
Him should not perish ;"-3et has here the force of a moral- 
necessity ; — to meet the requirements of the case and to 
fulfill the purpose of God, it was necessary that the Son 
of Man be lifted up-: the iva has the telic sense, in order 
that, to the end that, — so that this result might be secured. 
Hence the death of Jesus upon the cross sustained a 
necessary and vital relation to the salvation of mankind. 
How else can we account for the emphasis that Christ 
gave to His dying as the condition precedent to salvation 
by faith ? One might believe that Jesus was the eternal 
Son of God, that He became incarnate, that He lived a 
holy life, that He did the works of God, that He taught 
divine truth, that His teachings if followed would make 
men wise and holy and happy — one might believe all 
this irrespective of the question how this Jesus died, or 
whether He died at all. Had the Son of Man been trans- 
lated like Enoch and Elijah, without tasting death, or had 
He died in the ordinary course of nature, one might still 
to a certain extent have believed in His mission, His life, 
and His teachings. But simply to believe in His super- 
natural advent, His perfect character, His true and wise 
sayings, does not reach the measure and quality of the 
faith that Jesus Himself prescribed. Faith to that extent 
was avowed by Nicodemus at the opening of his interview 
with Christ : — " Eabbi, we know that thou art a teacher 
come from God ; for no man can do these miracles that 
thou doest, except God be with him." This was a con- 
fession of the divine mission of Jesus, of His divine 
works, and the divine authority of His teachings: a 
faith so strong that it gave the conviction of certainty ; a 
faith so sincere that he came to Jesus with a declaration 
of confidence, and in the spirit of a disciple, to learn from 



Christ's death in the plan of his mission. 55 

Him the higher signs and privileges of the kingdom of 
God. Yet to this very master in Israel, who was thus 
forward to acknowledge Him as a divine teacher, Jesus 
prescribed quite another element of faith, and another 
ground upon which faith in Himself should rest, a faith 
conditioned upon His crucifixion, and to arise out of 
that : — " As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, 
even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoso- 
ever believeth in Him should not perish." Believing unto 
salvation, faith that would lead to eternal life, this must 
arise from looking unto Christ as " lifted up " upon the 
cross. 

Christ taught this same doctrine when a little before 
His death, with explicit reference to the salvation of the 
world, He said, " I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will 
draw all men unto me." 1 Certain Greek proselytes had 
expressed a desire to "see Jesus;" His disciples, who 
looked upon Him as the Messiah to the Jews alone, 
hesitated to present them, but brought the request to their 
Lord. The answer of Jesus, instead of pronouncing 
categorically upon the case presented, made this the occa- 
sion of proclaiming the universality of His grace and the 
cosmopolitan nature of His kingdom. 

Hitherto He had seemed to limit His personal ministry 
to the Jews. When He sent forth the twelve to announce 
the kingdom of heaven, He commanded them saying, " Go 
not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the 
Samaritans enter ye not : but go rather to the lost sheep of 
the house of Israel ; " 2 and to the woman of Syrophe- 
nicia who besought Him to heal her daughter, He said, 
" I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of 
Israel." 3 But now He announces that all men shall be 
drawn unto Him, and this as consequent upon His death. 
The productive effect of His dying He sets forth under 

1 John xii. 32. 2 Matt. x. 5, 6. 3 Matt. xv. 24. 



56 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

the analogy of the fructifying seed : " The hour is come 
that the Son of Man should be glorified. Except a corn 
of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone ; 
but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." x Then as if 
struggling in His own spirit with the impending sacrifice, 
yet implicitly subjecting His own will to the will of His 
Father, He said, " Now is my soul troubled ; and what 
shall I say ? Father, save me from this hour ? but for 
this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy 
name." 2 What was the hour that hung over Him with 
such painful but momentous issues, but the hour appointed 
for His sacrifice upon the cross ? " Now is the judgment 
of this world ; now shall the prince of this world be cast 
out;" 3 — the kingdom of darkness shall be broken down, 
"and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all 
men unto Me." His death would be the seed-corn that 
should bring forth a new life for all mankind — the 
Gentile world as well as the people of Israel. 

In the light of this usage in the phrase " to be lifted 
up," it is most significant that, in His conversation with 
Mcodemus, Jesus did not speak of death simply as an event 
to be accepted by Him in the spirit of submission. He 
did not merely avow His willingness to die — His readi- 
ness, if need be, to suffer martyrdom, if by so doing, He 
could benefit mankind ; nor did He simply prophesy that 
after His death, His life and doctrine would be illuminated 
by that event, and by the natural and progressive influence 
of truth, light, and love, would become a means of salva- 
tion to the world; — much more than this lay in His 
thought. From the first He looked forward to His cruci- 
fixion, His being " lifted up " as the appointed termination 
of His life and ministry. His going out of the world in 
that manner was included in the purpose of His coming into 
the world. His dying upon the cross was no thing of acci- 

l John xii. 23, 24. 2 John xii. 27. 3 John xii. 31. 



THE BEAZEN SEEPENT A SYMBOL. 57 

dent, His being lifted up no mere incident of priestly hate 
or popular excitement, — this was in the plan of His mis- 
sion as truly as were His advent, His preaching, His 
miracles, His life of truth and love. He announced to 
Nicodemus as one of the truths He had brought down 
from heaven, the necessary and vital relation of His death to 
the salvation of mankind ; and for the key to this doctrine, 
referred him to a memorable incident of Jewish history as 
a type of the saving benefit to be derived from His cruci- 
fixion. " As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, 
even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever 
belie veth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." 
That was a day of terror and agony in the wilderness 
when fire-serpents 1 swarmed in the camp of Israel. This 
venomous reptile, a mottled snake with fiery red spots upon 
its head, abounds at certain seasons in the sandy wilder- 
ness of Arabah, that skirts the western side of the moun- 
tains of Edom, from the foot of the Dead Sea to the Gulf 
of Akabah. It is the terror of fishermen along the Gulf, 
and of the Bedouins when encamped in the neighboring 
desert. 2 So inflammable is its bite that it is likened to fire 
coursing through the veins ; so intense is its venom, and so 
rapid in its action, that the bite is fatal within a few hours. 
The body swells with a fiery eruption, the tongue is con- 

1 Numbers xxi. 6, 8; Deut. viii. 15 : the term Nahash, the generic name for 
serpent, is here qualified by the term Saraph, burning; which, by some, is 
supposed to describe a fiery, inflammable bite, but by others the fiery-red ap- 
pearance of the serpent itself, especially about the head. 

2 Burckhardt, (Vol. II. p. 814) says, " The sand on the shore showed traces 
of snakes on every hand. My guide told me that snakes were very common in 
these regions, and that the fishermen were very much afraid of them, and put 
out their fires at night before going to sleep, because the light was known to 
attract them." Schubert, Journey from AJenbnJi to the Hor (ii. 406) states that 
" in the afternoon a large and very mottled snake was brought to us, marked 
yt'ith. fiery spots and spiral lines, which evidently belonged, from the formation 
of its teeth, to one of the most poisonous species. The Bedouins say that these 
snakes, of which they have great dread, are very numerous in this locality." 



58 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

sumed with thirst, and the poor wretch writhes in agony 
till death brings relief. 

This pest suddenly appeared in the camp of Israel in 
prodigious numbers ; from crevices in the rocks, from holes 
in the sand, swarmed these fiery-headed demons into every 
tent. There was no running away from them, and killing 
seemed hardly to diminish their numbers. On every side 
there was a cry of anguish — men, women, children racked 
with this fiery torture, none able to save or even help 
another — " and much people of Israel died." 

In this extremity the people came to Moses, and 
besought him to pray the Lord to take away the serpents. 
They came confessing their sin, and acknowledging that 
the plague was a just retribution; for they had reviled 
Moses as the cause of their disappointments and fatigues in 
the desert, and had even reproached the name of God for 
their lack of bread and water. Helpless, self-condemned, 
in danger of perishing, they now felt that deliverance must 
come from God, and could come from God only. " And 
Moses prayed for the people." 1 The manner in which this 
prayer was answered showed the hand of God even more 
distinctly than had the appearance of the plague. For if 
Jehovah were about to interfere, it would seem probable 
that He would act upon the physical cause of the suffering, 
either directly, by destroying or scattering the' serpents, or 
indirectly, by guiding Moses to some healing herb or other 
means of cure — thus providing a physical remedy for a 
physical evil. But He chose to employ a moral remedy, 
which by summoning the people to an act of faith, would 
bring Jehovah Himself before them as the direct author of 
their healing. "The Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a 
fiery serpent and set it upon a pole ; and it shall come to 
pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it 
shall live:" 2 — and presently there was lifted up in the 

1 Numbers xxi. 7. 2 v. 8. 



THE BRAZEN SERPENT A SYMBOL. 59 

camp, high over all the tents, the image in brass of the 
fiery destroyer ; and from every tent crawled forth the bit- 
ten, dying men, or were carried forth by hands that now 
had faith to minister — and they looked ; those eyes whose 
life was burning out in the fire of fever, looked where the 
great brazen serpent was all ablaze in the sun, (as if the 
myriad fire-serpents were compressed into one burning 
symbol) — looked, to behold the fierce destroyer nailed 
harmless as dead metal to the tree ; looked, to learn that 
Jehovah was in the camp as a Deliverer, and would destroy 
death in victory ; looked, and with the look came healing ; 
looked, and the eye lost its madness, and shone again with 
the brightness of hope ; looked, and the fiery torrent of the 
veins was calmed, and the pulse beat again with the even 
flow of health ; looked, and he who just now stood a fiend 
of despair within the jaws of hell came forth a new man, in 
his right mind, and kissed his wife and children, and they 
together worshiped God ; " For it came to pass that if a 
serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of 
brass, he lived." And as Moses lifted up that serpent in 
the day of death and despair for Israel, even so — in like 
manner, for a like purpose, with like significance, the Son 
of Man was lifted up, and hung there upon the cross that 
all Jerusalem then saw, that all the ages since have seen, 
that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but 
have eternal life. 

The force of this " even so " suggests in this symbol of 
the serpent a significance of doctrine concerning Christ. 
First of all, the plague of serpents was because of sin. 
Though the agent of the divine displeasure was a natural 
pest belonging to that locality, yet the visitation of the ser- 
pents was a judgment from God. Ewald, who does not ques- 
tion the authenticity or the antiquity of this narrative, ad- 
mits this element in the case. "The people advancing to- 
wards the Red Sea, weary of the hardships of the tedious 



60 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

march, and tired of the scanty nourishment afforded by the 
manna of the desert, complained loudly to God and Moses 
of the want of bread and water. Instead, however, of 
obtaining relief, they thus incurred a much greater evil, 
being furiously pursued by a multitude of large and veno- 
mous serpents, from the bites of which many died. In 
this they recognized God's righteous punishment for their 
murmuring, and repentantly entreated Moses for his pro- 
phetical interposition." x In the plague of the fiery ser- 
pents, the sin of unbelief, ingratitude, rebellion against 
God, was visited with condemnation and penalty. 

Next,- the people terrified and humbled by the judgment, 
and cut off from all human relief, looked to Jehovah for 
deliverance, humbly confessing their sins. In this peni- 
tent frame they came to Moses and said, "We have 
sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against 
thee ; pray unto the Lord, that He may take away the 
serpents from us." 2 Here was acknowledged the necessity 
of divine interposition to take away the penalty of sin. 
God alone could stay the judgment. 

Again, the brazen serpent was appointed by God ex- 
pressly for a sign of His merciful interposition. This was 
no device of human ingenuity; no experiment on the 
part of Moses and the elders upon the imagination of the 
people; between this and the cure there could be no 
relation of cause and effect; simply as an exhibition or 
demonstration it could have no efficacy ; — but it was 
God's appointed sign of mercy. Here again Ewalcl is true 
to the conception of the narrative : " Moses by divine 
command fixed a serpent of brass upon an elevated banner, 
that, gazing on it, those who were bitten might be healed ; 
and this actually occurred. The meaning of the story is 
certainly not that Moses set up the image of the serpent as 
an object of adoration ; it was obviously only a sign that, 

1 Ewald, Hist, of Israel, I, 599, English edition. 2 Num. xxi. 7- 



THE BRAZEN SERPENT A TYPE OF MERCY. 61 

as by the command of Jahve this serpent was waved on 
high, bound and harmless, so every one that looked upon 
it with faith in the redeeming power of Jahve would be 
preserved from evil. It was therefore a symbolic sign, 
like that of St. George and the Dragon among ourselves, 
or the Serpent itself among the heathen. As that creature, 
by nature the most noxious, and yet supposed capable of 
being tamed, became the image of remediable bodily ill, 
and consequently the symbol of JEsculapius, so here we 
have something of the same import, but with an element 
of reality and practical necessity." l 

But the point of supreme moment in the case is that 
men looked to God for healing mercy through that sign; 
not only did they look to God as the source whence 
healing must come, but they looked through this par- 
ticular sign, as representing the fact of healing — and none 
in all the camp were healed except they looked upon the 
serpent of brass. 

Thus far the analogy is simple, obvious, perfect. It 
was to counteract an evil consequence of sin, to remove 
the penalty of a moral transgression, that the serpent 
was lifted up ; and it was for men perishing in sin that 
the Son of Man was lifted up; for men condemned 
because of sin that He came with that healing of the soul 
which is eternal life. The cure for the bite of the serpent 
was appointed of God expressly for that end ; and so, in 
His counsels of wisdom and mercy it was provided that 
the Son of Man be lifted up — His crucifixion was ap- 
pointed for our salvation. 

The case of the bitten Israelite was hopeless without 
the special intervention of Jehovah ; and the case of the 
soul smitten with the plague of sin, stung with remorse 
of conscience, condemned by the righteous law, doomed 
to " perish " in its iniquities, were hopeless, had not God 
sent His Son to be lifted up upon the cross. 

1 Ewald, Hist, of Israel, 1, 599. 



62 THE THEOLOGY OF CHEIST. 

The brazen serpent, though displayed in sight of all the 
camp as the divine provision of healing, was made effica- 
cious to any individual sufferer only by his looking, which 
was the personal act of faith; and even so the Son of 
Man was lifted up "that whosoever believeth in Him should 
not perish, but have eternal life." l As deliverance from 
the condemnation of sin was possible only through the 
love of God in giving His Son to be crucified, so there is 
no actual deliverance to any sinner save through his own 
act of faith in the Son of Man as lifted up. "He that 
believeth on Him is not condemned; but He that be- 
lieveth not is condemned already, because He hath not 
believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God." 2 

There is yet another point in this analogy that comes, 
if possible, still closer to the root both of the evil and its 
remedy. As Alford describes it : 3 " The brazen serpent 
was made in the likeness of the serpents which had bitten 
them. It represented to them the poison which had gone 
through their frames, and it was hung up there, on the 
banner staff as a trophy, to show them that for the poison 
there was healing, — that the plague had been overcome. 
In it there was no poison, only the likeness of it. And 
was not He who knew no sin made sin for us ? Were 
not sin and Death and Satan crucified when He was 
crucified ? " In a word, did not the dying of the Son of 
Man upon the cross strike at the root of all human misery, 
and destroy the destroyer ? Nothing less than this surely 
could He have meant when He said, " My flesh will I 
give for the life of the world ; " " The good shepherd 
giveth his life for the sheep ; " 4 and in that most emphatic 
declaration, " The Son of Man came not to be ministered 
unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for 
many." 5 

1 John iii. 15. 3 Comm. in loe. 5 Mark x. 45. 

2 John iii. 18. * John vi. 51; x. 11. 



RANSOM OR REDEMPTION. 63 

This word XuTpov, Ransom, admits of no ambiguity : it 
means " purchase-money/ ' the price paid for the release 
of any one from captivity, from prison, or from peril. 
The Septuagint uses it for P™? and ^p3 — compensation, 
redemption, satisfaction by a price. Thus, by the Leviti- 
cal law, the owner of an unruly ox was responsible in 
various penalties for the mischief done by the animal. 
When liable to the penalty of death, he might redeem his 
life by a fine, and this was the Xdvpov • " if there be laid 
on him a sum of money, then he shall give for the ransom 
of his life whatsoever is laid upon him." 1 A universal 
ransom-money was levied upon the people to avert a 
judgment from Jehovah. "When thou takest the sum 
of the children of Israel after their number, then shall 
they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the Lord, 
when thou numberest them; that there be no plague 
among them when thou numberest them." 2 This same 
redemption-tax is afterward spoken of as the " atonement 
money." 3 

This same term Xurpov is employed by the Septuagint 
for the price of the redemption of a slave, and also of land 
that had been alienated. " In all the land of your pos- 
session ye shall grant a redemption for the land." 4 The 
poor debtor who had sold himself into servitude could be 
redeemed by his kinsman ; " according unto his years " 
[of the unexpired term of his service] shall be " the price 
of his redemption.^ 5 

On the other hand, it was forbidden to accept a ransom 
for a murderer : " Ye shall take no satisfaction (Xurpov) 
for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of death." 6 

The verb-form of the same word is used for redeeming 
by a substitute. " Every firstling of an ass thou shalt 
redeem with a lamb ; and if thou wilt not redeem it, then 

1 Ex. xxi. 30. 2 Ex. xxx. 12. 3 v. 16. 

* Lev. xxv. 24. 6 Lev. xxv. 52. 6 Num. xxxv. 31. 



64 THE THEOLOGY OF CHEIST. 

thou shalt break his neck ; and all the first-born of man 
among thy children shalt thou redeem." 1 

The same word, chiefly in the plural form Aurpa, is 
common in classic Greek in the sense of ransom — a price 
paid for redemption. Plato uses it in describing the rich 
presents that Chryses brought to the Greeks for the ran- 
som of his daughter. 2 Thucydides speaks of Hippocrates, 
tyrant of Gela, having received the territory of Camarina 
as a ransom for some Syracusan prisoners. 3 Herodotus, 
describing the victory of the Athenians over the Chalci- 
deans and the Boeotians, says, " All the Chalcidean 
prisoners whom they took were put in irons, and kept for 
a long time in close confinement, as likewise were the 
Boeotians, until the ransom asked for them was paid. . . 
The Athenians made an offering of a tenth part of the 
ransom-money — zwv XurpcDv." 4 Demosthenes 5 and Xeno- 
phon 6 used kurpov in the same sense of a price paid 
for a ransom. In the great tragic poet iEschylus is a 
striking instance of Xuzpov in the sense of an expiation or 
atonement for murder. The chorus of mourning women 
bewailing the untimely end of Agamemnon, exclaim, 
" What atonement is there for blood that has fallen on the 

ground ? 7 All the rivers moving in one channel 

would flow in vain to purify murder." How admirably 
comes in here the New Testament doctrine of an expiation, 
a ransom, sufficient to atone for every crime. The Son of 
Man gave His life " a ransom, Xvrpov, for many." 

A ransom from what? He did not give His life to 
deliver the Jewish nation from the Roman yoke, for He 
was never concerned in an insurrection, nor a political 

1 Ex. xiii. 13. All these references are to the Septuagint version. 

2 Eep. 39, 3 D. on j\\6zv 6 Xpvcnj? ttjs re flvyarpos Avrpa <f>epwv. 

3 Thuc. vi. 5. AvVpa avSpiav Svpa/cocnW <uxju.aA.wTwv AajSwv t>jv yW T>jv nap.api,- 
vaC(av. 

* Herod v. 77. 6 1248, 25, 1250, 1. 6 Hell. 7, 2, 16. 

T iEsch. Cho. 42. ri yap \vrpov neaovTOs ai/aaros weS<a ; 



CHRIST'S DEATH A RANSOM FOR SIN. 65 

movement of any sort, and He was put to death at the 
instigation of His own countrymen. He refused to place 
Himself at the head of the populace when they sought to 
make Him a king, and He declared that His kingdom 
was not of this world. It was not simply to deliver the 
poor and degraded from servitude, nor the ignorant and 
lowly from their condition of debasement, that Jesus 
gave His life a ransom ; for though He foresaw that such 
deliverances would result from His doctrines, the social 
emancipation of the poor was not the work to which He 
devoted His life. " The Son of Man is come to save that 
which is lost; " T and it was in fulfillment of that purpose 
that " He gave His life a ransom for many." He might 
have shunned death at the time and in the mode it came 
to Him; but He put Himself in the way of it, and against 
the remonstrance of His disciples went to Jerusalem, 
knowing what would there befall Him — not calculating 
chances, nor simply incurring a risk — but deliberately 
accepting death. As He said to Pilate, He laid down 
His life ; He came to do this ; it was in His plan to die 
upon the cross as a ransom. He " must be lifted up " in 
order that men "should not perish, but have eternal 
life : " — to " perish," therefore, would be the opposite of 
eternal life — the loss of that blessedness in God which is 
the life of the soul. From that destruction Jesus has ran- 
somed us by giving His own life. 

Here then from the lips of Christ Himself is the 
doctrine that He came into the world to die for the sal- 
vation of the world ; and deliverance from that death 
spiritual and eternal which is the consequence of sin, and 
the securing eternal life to the soul, come by faith in the 
Son of Man as lifted up to be a Saviour, — thus giving 
His life for the redemption of mankind. This is the 
Gospel of the kingdom. It goes through the plague- 

1 Matt, xviii. 11. 
5 



66 THE THEOLOGY OF CHEIST. 

stricken world crying, O sin-smitten soul ! wouldst thou be 
healed? look to Jesus lifted up for thy salvation. O 
tormenting conscience ! wouldst thou be stilled ? look to 
Jesus on the cross, lifted up for thy healing ! O soul 
condemned and dying ! wouldst find again thy life ? look 
to Jesus, and the condemnation shall be cancelled, thy 
ransom accomplished, and the warrant given thee of life 
purchased and sealed by His death. And whosoever 
would not perish, let him look to Jesus and be saved ! 



CHAPTER VI. 

SALVATION LIMITED ONLY BY UNBELIEF. 

That the death of Christ had a remedial virtue and in- 
tent, a pre-ordained and necessary relation to the life-heal- 
ing of the soul ; that it was a price paid for our redemp- 
tion, having therefore a proper vicarious import in respect 
of the salvation of the world, has been established from 
His own words. As in a day of dire extremity to Israel, 
when the sin of the people was visited upon them by a 
fearful and destructive plague, Moses, by command of 
God, lifted up the serpent in the wilderness to show that 
Jehovah was present as a Saviour for every one that would 
look to Him in faith ; in like manner, by appointment of 
God, and for the manifestation of His present grace and 
succor, the Son of Man was lifted up to the hope and faith 
of a perishing world, " that whosoever believeth in Him 
should not perish, but have eternal life." 1 This last 
declaration announces, by authority of Christ, the practical 
reach and application of the saving benefits of His death. 
And this was followed by an utterance, if possible, still 
more emphatic, setting forth the Salvation as provided in 
the gift of God, and as realized through its acceptance 
among men : " For God so loved the world that He gave 
His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God 
sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but 
that the world through Him might be saved." 2 Here the 
Whosoever points to an unlimited provision, the sufficiency 

i John iii. 15. 2 John iii. 16, 17. 

67 



68 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

of the gift of God for the whole world ; but the Believing, 
which is the necessary and invariable condition, suggests 
that the breadth of result in the numbers actually saved 
may not equal the breadth of provision for salvation in the 
death of Jesus upon the cross ; universality on the part of 
God, the provider, limitation only by the act of Man, the 
receiver. 

Critical authorities are pretty evenly divided upon the 
question whether these words were a part of our Lord's 
discourse to Mcodemus, or an explanatory addition by the 
Evangelist. 1 Though the change to the past tense 2 — 
" God gave or sent His Son n — may give countenance to the 
latter view, there is here no sign of a break in the dis- 
course; and the statement of the origin and extent of the 
redemptive mission of Christ follows naturally the -declara- 
tion that the Son of Man " must be lifted up." The pur- 
pose and reach of the divine sacrifice are logically con- 
nected with the fact of the sacrifice and its necessity. 
"Whatever was the ground of the necessity that Jesus 
should die for our salvation, His coming into the world was 
projected in the love of God, for that very end ; and that 
love is pictured as self-sacrificing, wide-reaching, all- 
embracing. 

But inasmuch as the present line of discussion limits us 
to the very words of Jesus, even should this particular 
form of expression be doubtful, its sentiment is confirmed 
by words of the same import that did certainly fall from 
His lips. " Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that hear- 
eth my word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath 
everlasting life." 3 " This is the will of Him that sent Me, 
that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, 

1 Among recent commentators, Tholuck, Olshausen and others take the for- 
mer view; the latter is maintained hy Knapp, Meyer, Hug, Alford. 

2 The Aorist sSukc, contemplates the action in the mind of the speaker, as 
brought to pass. s John v. 24. 



NO LIMITATION IN THE PLAN. 69 

may have everlasting life." 1 Add to these such declara- 
tions as the following: "He that believeth shall be 
saved/' 2 " Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast 
out/' 3 and the testimony of Christ is clear, positive, and 
ample to the point that through His death salvation is 
provided for all mankind. 

There are, however, other sayings of Christ that seem in 
some sort to put a limitation upon the application of this 
provision of grace, or at least upon its result in actual ex- 
perience. In answer to the question " Lord, are there few 
that be saved ?" Jesus said, " Strive to enter in at the 
strait gate ; for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, 
and shall not be able." 4 " Wide is the gate, and broad is 
the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be 
that go in thereat ; because strait is the gate, and narrow is 
the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find 
itP 5 Summing up these several sayings, we find that the 
doctrine of Christ concerning salvation embraces the fol- 
lowing points : 

(a.) The fullness and freeness of the provision of salva- 
tion for all mankind, upon just and simple conditions. 

(b.) That none do really come to Christ for salvation, 
except as they are influenced from the Father ; and 

(c.) That by reason of unbelief or of misdirected en- 
deavors, many will really fail of salvation at the last. 

That there is a limitation somewhere upon the practical 
working of the divine plan of salvation, or rather in the 
actual results of that plan, is the obvious teaching of 
Christ, in some of the passages cited above. But is this 
limitation in the plan itself? or does it in any way detract 
from the sufficiency of the atonement, or the fullness and 
freeness of the offer of salvation on the part of God ? Is 
such an inference warranted by the declaration of Christ 

1 John vi. 40. 2 Mark xvi. 16. 3 John vi. 37. 

* Luke xiii. 24. 6 Matt. vii. 13, 14. 



70 THE THEOLOGY OF CHEIST. 

" No man can come to Me, except the Father which hath 
sent Me draw him." 1 There is much to the same purport 
in our Lord's discourse recorded in the sixth chapter of 
John : — " All that the Father giveth Me, shall come to 
Me." " This is the Father's will which hath sent Me, that 
of all which He hath given Me, I should lose nothing, but 
should raise it up again at the last day." 2 If these words 
fairly imply that God has made an arbitrary selection of 
the subjects of E-edemption, so that salvation is provided 
for only a limited number to the purposed exclusion of all 
others, then how can one fulfill the commission of Christ, 
that authorizes and requires His disciples to "go into all the 
world, and preach the gospel to every creature," upon the un- 
qualified assurance that " he that belie veth shall be saved?" 3 

The sayings of Christ touching the " drawing " of His 
Father, the " giving " by His Father, must be interpreted 
in accordance with these broad terms in which He himself 
first announced the gospel, and at the last commissioned 
His disciples to proclaim it to the world. " God so loved 
the world " — not alone the Jewish people, nor any other 
people of the world ; not a certain chosen portion of human 
society ; not some one favored age of the world, but the 
world of mankind, the human race in its totality: — God so 
loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth — not whoever is selected and set apart 
from the rest of his species, not those belonging to a favored 
class, — but "whosoever believeth in Him should not perish." 
The love is equal toward all ; the salvation is open to all 
upon the same simple and impartial condition ; and the 
result in each and every case, hinges upon the Believing. 
This declaration, so absolute and unequivocal, is borne out 
by the uniform tenor of the invitations and commands of the 
gospel, and is neither contradicted nor qualified by the state- 
ment ; " All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me." 

Who are the "All" here spoken of, but simply 
* John vi. 44. « vr. 37-39. * Mark xvi. 16. 



THE COMING IN THROUGH FAITH. 71 

believers ? The Father gave to His Son the whole world 
of mankind as the field of His redemptive work, to the 
intent that through Him the world might be saved ; the 
provision, in its own nature, renders the salvation practica- 
ble for all and possible to every man. But the very object 
of this salvation, that which constitutes it a salvation in 
reality, is deliverance from sin ; and for this there must be 
repentance, and faith in the Saviour whom God hath sent ; 
therefore, it was not certified that by the lifting up of the 
Son of Man the whole world would in fact be saved ; but 
that there should be gathered to Christ a multititude of be- 
lieving souls, was made sure by the promise of the Father. 
The discourse recorded in the sixth chapter of John was 
addressed to a group of cavilers, who met the sayings of 
Jesus concerning His Father with the demand, "What 
sign shewest thou, that we may see and believe Thee ?" 

Jesus announced Himself as the true sign — the bread 
of life come down from heaven, — and added, " He that 
cometh to Me shall never hunger, and he that be- 
lieveth on Me shall never thirst." Here was the same 
breadth of promise to a sincere faith. "But," He con- 
tinued, " ye also have seen Me, and believed not ;" there- 
fore they did not come ; therefore they did not eat of the 
bread of life; and therefore, practically, they were not 
saved. Yet He comforted Himself with the thought that 
His mission should not everywhere and always be frus- 
trated by the unbelief of men. Some will believe ; many 
will believe; and all these the Father has promised to Him 
as His own ; and these coming, one by one, with the ex- 
pression of a personal faith, would be thus made manifest 
as of the All that are " given by the Father." Hence He 
added (v. 40), " This is the will of Him that sent Me, that 
every one which seeth the Son and believeth on Him, may 
have everlasting life." The believing is the coming, and 
the fact of believing indicates each as one of the grand 



72 THE THEOLOGY OF CHEIST. 

total given to Christ. Hence the statement in v. 44 does 
not teach that God has made an arbitrary selection of cer- 
tain persons to be saved, and given these to Christ, bnt 
that He has given to Christ all who believe, that these may 
be His peculiar people — and the believing is open to all. 
The giving is not for the purpose of excluding any, but of 
making sure the fruits of redemption ; not for narrowing 
the basis, but for securing a result upon the basis and by 
means of it. 

What, then, is meant by that u drawing " of the Father, 
without which Jesus declared that no man can come to 
Him ? This also is interpreted by the act of faith, as He 
described it at the conclusion of this same discourse, (verses 
64, 65.) Having defined the spiritual significance of par- 
taking of His own flesh and blood, and the consequent 
need of a spiritual frame of mind in order to receive that 
" hard saying," He charged some of His own disciples with 
the want of this sincere spiritual faith : — " For Jesus knew 
from the beginning who they were that believed not, and 
who should betray Him. And He said, Therefore, 
said I unto you, that no man can come unto Me except it 
were given unto him of my Father ;" — which is neither 
more nor less than the doctrine " that which is born of the 
Spirit is spirit," and therefore must every one be born of 
the Spirit, regenerated by a divine illumination. This, 
then, is the drawing of the Father — a gracious influence 
quickening the soul, and persuading it to believe. 

Can any honest interpretation derive from this the 
notion of an arbitrary selection on the part of God, limit- 
ing the design and the application of the death of His Son, 
selecting some and excluding others as the heirs of life, by 
a bare determination of His own will ? 

None, indeed, come to Christ, except the Father draw 
them ; but how many does the Father draw, who yet refuse 
to come ! For what is the manner and the purpose of this 



THE COMING A FREE ACT OF WILL. 73 

drawing? And whence arises the necessity that the 
Father should draw men to Christ ? Our Lord has given 
the answer in that sentence of condemnation which lies 
against the unbelieving world of to-day as justly and 
forcibly as against the Jews who rejected Him to His face: 
" Ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life." x 
The coming is believing ; it is repenting, turning, trusting ; 
and this is an act of will. The will of the man himself 
must move, if ever he shall come to Christ, and if his will 
does not move spontaneously, cordially, to accept Christ 
when offered as a Saviour, then nothing further can be 
done for his salvation except to draw him by some influ- 
ence directed to incite the will. Coercion is impossible, 
for the will cannot be forced ; — to force it by sheer power 
were to destroy its very nature as the choosing, willing 
faculty of the soul. Hardly can the will be reasoned with ; 
for the fault commonly does not lie with the understanding 
and the judgment, but in the choice being fixed already 
upon the wrong — " Light has come into the world ;" the 
truth is clear enough, the way is plain enough, the light 
is sufficient for the understanding and the conscience ; but 
" men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are 
evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light ; neither 
cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved." 2 

In this state of facts — the salvation provided for all and 
freely offered to all; this salvation rendered availing as a de- 
liverance from sin only through a personal repentance and 
faith ; this again requiring a free act of will, and yet the 
will halting, not accepting, not moving toward acceptance, 
not " coming " — the only thing that can be done further is 
to influence the will by some power of persuasion that 
shall incite it to right action. That influence is what our 
Lord has described as the operation of the Holy Spirit 
upon the mind — no more to be defined than the coming 

1 John v. 40. 2 j hn in. 19, 20. 



74 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

and going of the wind, yet stirring the soul to its depths, 
" convincing it of sin, of righteousnesss, and of judgment," 
and so arousing and drawing it that the will does move, 
does choose, does decide, does come. Yet not always ! 
— for the will is an agent of such fearful, such stubborn 
power, that it may even resist the Holy Ghost, resist the 
drawing of the Father, as it does resist the invitations of 
the Son. Hence while it is true that all who come to 
Christ are drawn of the Father, it is still true that others 
perish, not because they are hindered or neglected of God, 
nor because they are not solicited by the Gospel and 
wrought upon by the Holy Ghost, but because they will 
not come. 

The argument leads to this conclusion; that the draw- 
ing of the soul to Christ by a special influence from the 
Father, is directed solely to this end — to overcome the 
reluctance, the indifference, or (to put it in the strongest 
terms) the inertness and stagnation of the human will; 
that the necessity for this divine influence in regeneration 
does not arise from any limitation in the normal powers 
of the human soul, nor any limitation in the provision of 
salvation through Christ, nor any limitation nor discrimi- 
nation in the love of God in planning for the salvation 
of lost men ; — in a word, this " drawing" of the Father 
does not proceed upon the basis of limitation or restriction, 
in the provision of redemption or in the desire of God for 
the recovery of sinners ; it cannot create, it does not imply 
a hindrance to the salvation of any, nor the rejection ox 
any, but is the reaching forth of the same love and mercy 
that provided the redemption, to make sure, by all means, 
of some actual fruit. There is nothing in any act or pur- 
pose of God that limits salvation in respect either of its 
adequacy as a provision or its amplitude as an offer : 
neither has God imposed upon any mind any kind or de- 
gree of restraint in respect to its accepting the salvation 



MAN'S WILL ALONE HINDERS SALVATION. 75 

provided by Christ, and profiting to the full by its benefits. 
When He commands all men to repent, He does not com- 
mand an impossibility: when He requires them to believe 
upon Christ, He means that every man should believe ; 
when He promises salvation upon these simple and uni- 
form term?, there are no drawbacks nor exceptions what- 
ever. 1 

And yet the final results of Redemption will not be 
commensurate with the provision. The whole world might 
be saved, but alas, not all the world will be saved ! Jesus 
Christ, the Saviour of the world, has pictured the dread 
and final separation of mankind into two classes at the last 
judgment, and has declared that the wicked "shall go away 
into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life 
eternal." 2 

Here is a limitation in the actual results of salvation : — 
but whence does this arise ? What is the turning-point, 
the dividing line? Does Christ Himself desire to save 
only one-tenth of the human race ? or one-fourth ? or one- 
half? Did He not die for all ? Has not He invited all ? 

Whence comes the difference? We are brought back 
for an answer to that pivot of human character, the will, 
as the turning-point of destiny. It is just the question of 
believing or not believing. Believing on the Lord Jesus 
Christ as the Saviour from sin is the beginning of that new 
life which is salvation. Without this free committal of 
his soul to Christ one cannot so much as start in the new 
life ; and therefore, if the man himself, under the light of 
the gospel, the invitations of Christ, the drawing of the 
Father, does not turn and believe, his deliverance from sin 
is an impossibility. This is no arbitrary ruling of the 
Creator ; it is the law under which the soul exists by the 

1 For a full discussion of the relations of the Holy Spirit to human volition 
see the author's volume on " the Holy Comforter." 

2 Matt. xxv. 46. 



76 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

necessity of its moral constitution. It is not that God 
created any soul with the intent that it should perish ; nor 
that He either dooms or % leaves any to perish by limiting 
or withholding on His part the provision of salvation; 
for " God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the 
world, but that the world through Him might be saved." 
Why then is not the whole world ipso facto saved ? How 
comes it that any are condemned ? The evangelist has 
answered this question in terms which, if they be not the 
very words of Christ, are the logical complement to His 
own statement of the condition of salvation : " He that be- 
lieveth on Him is not condemned ; but he that believeth 
not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in 
the name of the only-begotten Son of God." * His non-ac- 
ceptance of the only possible deliverance from sin leaves 
him to the consequences of sin, in condemnation and death. 
The requirement of faith as a condition of salvation is 
not arbitrary, but is necessary upon the highest moral 
grounds. One cannot be saved except through being freed 
from sin; and he cannot be freed from sin except by 
repenting, and by forsaking sin through that divine 
help which is brought him in the cross of Christ and 
by the coming of the Holy Ghost. Believing on 
Christ is a condition with which every one can comply ; 
it is a just, necessary, and simple requirement, compliance 
with which is salvation and life in the very act ; the one 
sole limitation upon the final results of Christ's redeeming 
sacrifice arises from the unbelief of men, which even the 
drawing of the Father often fails to overcome. We 
come back, therefore, to the doctrine of a full and free sal- 
vation as declared by Christ without limitation — no limi- 
tation on the part of God, neither in the magnitude of the 
provision itself, nor in the scope of the offer of salvation, 
nor in the intent with which that offer is made ; no limi- 

1 John iii. 18. 



FULNESS AND FREENESS OF THE SALVATION. 77 

tation upon the result save what the will of man imposes, 
through unbelief. It is a full salvation, adequate to the 
wants of the whole world ; it is a free salvation, offered 
equally and impartially to whoever will accept it. 

The gift of God proclaims this. " God so loved the 
world that He gave His only-begotten Son : " — that single 
fact carries with it the whole argument. He who sends 
his only son to fight for his country couldadd nothing to 
that proof of his devotion to the country in all its interests 
— to its material prosperity, to its moral unity, to its gov- 
ernment and laws, to the whole nation. The sending is 
the final argument; and when He who sends is the 
Almighty Father, whose one only Son represents the in- 
finitude of His love, and that sending is grounded in His 
love and pity for the world, that fact alone determines the 
conclusion that He would have all men to be saved. 

The sacrifice itself proclaims this; necessary in all its 
fulness for one, adequate in its oneness for all. It was 
not against sins numerically that Christ testified by His 
cross, nor was it a certain form or number of transgres- 
sions that called for His mediation ; but it was Sin that 
He testified against as treason to the government of God, 
and that required an expiation which by its virtue in re- 
deeming one could equally avail for all. 

The word of Christ proclaims this universal sufficiency 
of His sacrifice both in scope and in availability : " Him 
that cometh I will in no wise cast out " l — " that the 
world through Him might be saved." 2 

The testimony of myriads confirms this declaration. In 
all the ages since, whosoever has applied by faith for this 
salvation has found that it awaited him upon his simply 
coming, and that it sufficed for his personal necessity as if 
provided for him alone ; nor has any one ever failed of 
salvation who would only believe. 

1 John vi. 37. 2 John iii. 17. 



78 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

He, therefore, who refuses to come to Christ, does all 
that lies in his power to hinder the consummation of the 
world's deliverance. A universal deliverance from sin, 
a universal consecration to a holy life in God, would 
render this world as pure and blessed as heaven; but 
every man that will not come to Christ for personal de- 
liverance from sin, so far as in him lies, delays and frus- 
trates that blessed consummation. The angels ushering 
in the Son of Man sang, "Peace on earth, good-will 
toward men ; " but unbelief breaks in upon that song with 
the discord and strife of sin. 

He that refuses to believe in Christ sets himself against 
all the forces of love in the universe that are seeking his 
good. God the Father has bent upon him His infinite 
compassion ; the Son of God has given for him His life 
upon the cross; the Holy Spirit has convinced, admonished, 
entreated, drawn him; heaven and its holy inhabitants 
have sought to welcome him to their joys ; but all this 
potency of love fails to save him because of his unbelief! 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE NATURE OF RELIGION". 

Religion in its broad acceptation — the obligation of 
the Soul toward God, as the object of worship and obedi- 
ence — i s the subject of supreme moment to mankind, and 
that upon which in all ages mankind have bestowed their 
chiefest care and thought. " Man is born with two needs, 
at once distinct and inseparable, the moral and the re- 
ligious instinct. Free, he yet feels that there exists a law 
which should regulate his will. Capable of intelligence 
and of love, his mind and his heart require an infinite ob- 
ject. Every man possesses the instinct of the Good, and 
the instinct of the Infinite, in a word, the instinct of the 
Divine. He who can live without faith in the Divine, or 
who has smothered that sublime faith within him, does 
not belong to humanity." * Where this instinct has de- 
veloped itself normally, the outward manifestation of 
Religion has taken almost as many varieties as there are 
differences of race, in mental characteristics, in domestic 
habits, and in social and civil customs. And so compre- 
hensive is the obligation of the religious feeling, that it 
takes as many types as there are faculties and sentiments 
of the soul, and modes of moral expression and action — 
now the Reason giving to Religion its particular cast ; now 
the Imagination; now the Senses and now the Tastes; 
now the beautiful in Nature, now the hopeful in Fancy, 
the pleasurable in Feeling; and now the gloomy, the 
grotesque, the horrible ; — yet these diversified and even 

1 Emile Saisset. Essais sur la Philosnphie et la Religion au xix. Siecle, p. 287. 

79 



80 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

contradictory manifestations of the religious idea or the 
religious feeling, are, for the most part, but exaggerations 
of some one element or feature which the religious idea 
properly includes, or which has a real basis in the reli- 
gious feeling. 

Difficult as it is to discriminate each and every phase of 
Religion by a note or sign peculiar to itself, we may dis- 
tribute the various types of Religion that have been de- 
veloped among mankind apart from Christianity, into five 
general classes ; — (a) the intellectual or speculative ; (b) the 
formal or ceremonial; (c) the humanitary, or religions of 
good works ; (d) the imaginative, or religions of supersti- 
tion ; (e) and the spiritual or pietistic, in which the medi- 
tative and emotional piety of the inner life is exalted above 
all modes of intellectual statement, all outward forms of 
worship, all practical works of beneficence. 

In the time of Christ, these leading types of Religion 
had all found expression in the world's history. Plato 
had elaborated his monotheistic conception of God as the 
all-comprehensive Idea ; while at the same time he had 
exalted Virtue, Truth, and Beauty into a sort of intel- 
lectual Triad — a Trinity not of hypostases but of pre- 
dicates — allegiance to which was the very essence of 
morality. With him Religion is the realization of the 
idea of the good, through the Reason bringing all the 
principles and actions of the soul into a perfect unison, and 
so to an intellectual harmony with God. The highest 
virtue is wisdom or absolute knowledge ; yet he said of 
God, " It is hard to investigate and find the Framer and 
Father of the universe ; and if one did find him, it were 
impossible to express him in terms comprehensible by 
all." l 

Aristotle, who lacked the mystic, poetic temperament of 
his great master, by the severity of his critical method 

1 Tim. p. 28. 



ARISTOTLE AND HIS SCHOOL. 81 

reduced the Deity to pure Intelligence, absorbed in self- 
contemplation, subject and object in one, the final cause 
of the world, x as the end of all its aspirations. To this 
almost impersonal, self-quiescent, incorporeal substance, 
Aristotle ascribed neither creative power nor morai 
quality. With his disciples, Aristotle's conception of a 
self-immanent Intelligence, dissociated from the world, 
degenerated into bald materialism, under the two-fold 
form of Atheism and Pantheism ; and so the Divinity that 
to Plato was the highest intellectual conception, through 
being contemplated solely with relation to the intellectual 
system of the universe, was either retired to an infinite 
distance and a state of absolute repose, or reduced to a 
mere potency or energy in the kingdom of Nature. 
Religion as pure intellectuality reached its highest de- 
velopment in Plato, only to be marred and materialized 
when handled by minds less delicate and pure than his 
own. 

The boast of modern Rationalism that in matters of 
belief it has emancipated the human intellect by admitting 
only that which is originated or established by Reason 
itself, may well be confronted with the fact that the highest 
product of Reason in the sphere of Religion was wrought 
out, and had well-nigh run out, before Christ came, and 
can be compared impartially with His teachings. It 
pushed one factor in Religion to an extreme that well-nigh 
destroyed the thing; for Religion and God as its object 
were reasoned into nothingness. 

While certain philosophers had thus refined Religion 
into a speculative nonentity, the actual religions of the 
pagan world at the time of Christ were full of superstition 

1 His thinking is upon Thought; eo-riv ^ vdrjcris vorjerews royo-is (Metaphys. 
xi. ix. 4) and sines He is the highest and best, His thinking is upon Himself. 
He moves the world not by an energy proceeding from Himself, but by the 
attraction that is in Himself, the power of the Beautiful or the Good. (De 
Coel). ii. 10-12. 



82 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

and sensuality — appealing to the Imagination by mystery, 
by the fascinations of pleasure and the torments of pain, and 
addressing the senses through forms of beauty, as in Greece, 
or by objects of terror, as in Egypt, l and in the remoter 
East. 

The three remaining types of Religion were fully illus- 
trated among the Jews of the time of Christ. Some made 
the virtue of religion consist in the close adherence to 
forms. To pay tithes of all that they possessed, even of 
the farthing herbs in their gardens, to fast twice in the 
week, to be careful even to scrupulosity in keeping the 
Sabbath, to offer all the sacrifices and observe all the 
sacred days prescribed by the law — such rigid Formalism 
constituted their religion. Others laid stress upon their 
good works; giving alms before men, and counting their 
charities for piety. And there were various sects of Jews — 
such as the Essenes and Therapeutse — who formed them- 
selves into communities or brotherhoods, like later orders of 
monks, for cultivating piety by seclusion from the world, 
rigorous self-denial, and devout secret meditation. 

Thus all the leading forms under which the religious 
idea or the religious feeling has found expression in the 
history of mankind, were in full development before the 
time of Christ. And these characteristic types, the specula- 
tive, the ceremonial, the superstitious, the humanitary, the 
pietistic have continued to reproduce themselves in new 
countries and among new peoples, and have even attempted 
to run Christianity itself into their several modes. Yet 
the Religion of Christ, Religion as taught by Him in its 
principles and exemplified by Him in its spirit, is some- 
thing apart from each and every one of these religious 
types, — sublime in its simplicity, profound in its origin, 

1 Some of the Egyptian divinities were spiritual in their nature and 
beneficent in their attributes ; but others were grossly animal in their aspect, 
or formidable, with the flail and scourge; and the Egyptian Hades was a 
region of darkness and horrors. 



RELIGION SEATED IN THE HEART. 83 

springing from the inmost depths of the soul, and universal 
in its reach and application. From His teachings one 
obtains quite another view of religion, in its nature, its 
spirit, and its power. 

First of all, Christ referred true religion to the heart as 
the seat of its vitality. If we inquire after the nature of 
Religion as Jesus presented it, we find that it was not a 
something which a man took upon him from without — a 
set of opinions that he espoused, a set of customs that he 
adopted, a set of regulations that he conformed to; nor 
was it a something which a man performed outside of 
himself — a round of ceremonies that he fulfilled, a course 
of devotions or of charities that he went through with : 
but while it covered all these — beliefs, devotions, ob- 
servances, charities, — and used them all as evidences of its 
presence, Religion itself as to its essence, was within the 
soul, and proceeded thence to the outer life. 

This fundamental conception of religion Christ presented 
under a variety of aspects. In the sermon on the mount, 
he traced sin to the inmost recesses of the heart. Murder 
is being angry with a brother without cause; adultery 
is the unchaste look, imagination, desire ; swearing is the 
profane thought, the irreverent feeling ; and so every sin is 
traced to the heart, and if a sinful act is conceived and 
purposed in the heart the man is guilty, even though he 
does not commit the act in its outward form. " A corrupt 
tree bringeth forth evil fruit ;" 1 and " an evil man, out of 
the evil treasure of his heart, bringeth forth that which is 
evil." 2 Hence Religion, which is to rectify the mischief 
of sin, must dispossess sin of the heart, and install itself 
there, at the centre of the moral life. The process by 
which this is effected is an interior spiritual work ; — re- 
pentance is a sorrow of the heart, and a turning of the will 
away from the sin ; to be " born again," is to be inwardly 
*Matt. vii. 17. 2Lukevi. 45. 



84 THE THEOLOGY OF CHEIST. 

renewed, so changed in heart as to be a new man in respect 
of spiritual things ; to believe upon Christ is for the heart 
to trust itself to Him ; " Blessed are the poor in spirit/' — 
they that are humble and broken in heart — " for theirs is 
the kingdom of heaven." And as with the beginning of 
religious experience, so of its consummation : it is through- 
out a spiritual work ; the process of renovation and sancti- 
fication, in the perfecting of the religious life, is to go on 
within the soul. " Blessed are the pure in heart" — those 
made inwardly and spiritually pure — " for they shall see 
God." 1 

Nor is it in essence alone that Religion is thus intensely 
spiritual and inward ; — religious acts, to have reality and 
value, must proceed from the heart, and fairly represent 
its spiritual frames. " When thou doest thine alms do 
not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do, in 
the synagogues, and in the streets, that they may have 
glory of men ; but when thou doest alms, let not thy left 
hand know what thy right hand doeth, that thine alms 
may be in secret." 2 In deeds of charity, one must not 
court the observation and applause of men, but act from 
pure, unselfish motives, as under the eye of his Father, 
which seeth in secret. 

Like precepts are laid down concerning prayer. One 
must not be ostentatious in his personal devotions : — 
"When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou 
hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father, which is in secret." 3 
Prayer is the communion of the heart with God. It does 
not consist of words ; much less is it to be valued by the 
multitude of words. 4 In Thibet, the Buddhists make use 
of a prayer-cylinder, in which yards of petitions, written 
upon narrow strips of paper, are wound like ribbon around 
a wire that passes through the centre, and each revolution 
of the cylinder upon this axis counts for a repetition of all 

iMatt. t. 3, 9. 2 Matt. yi. 1-4. »Matt. vi. 6. * Matt. vi. 7. 



MECHANICAL PRAYING. 85 

these prayers ; so that one needs only to keep twirling his 
cylinder at intervals, and he will secure the benefit of 
whole hours, and even miles of prayer ! Some economize 
time by setting the cylinder at work by water-power, or 
other mechanical contrivance, while their hands and feet 
are busy in other matters. And this tendency to me- 
chanicizing prayers is always found where the efficacy of 
prayer is sought in the opus operation. But the doctrine 
of Christ drives one back from all modes and forms, from 
the surroundings and accessories of devotion, into the cita- 
del of the soul, to find if he there possesses true religion. 
The alms, the prayers, the offices of charity and devotion, 
that are turned out upon dress parade, give no evidence of 
true loyalty to God, or of real strength in religious charac- 
ter. This must be found within where it exists at all, and 
when prayers and almsgiving take a public form, pub- 
licity must never be the end in view. As a matter of con- 
sciousness, or of self-congratulation, the left hand must not 
know what the right hand doeth ; * yet he who has this in- 
ner spirit of devotion toward God and beneficence toward 
man, is commanded to let his light so shine before men 
that they may see his good works, and glorify his Father, 
which is in heaven. 2 

Christ declared that no amount of praying and prophe- 
sying in His name, nor the multitude of wonderful and 
practically useful works done in His name, will avail to 
certify one as His disciple, nor commend him to favor at 
the judgment, where the inward spirit of love and devotion 
is wanting. 3 Thus by every form of presentation, for the 
essence of Religion He sends us back to the inmost centre 
of the soul. Religion is, first of all, a thing of the heart, 
internal and spiritual — " a good man, out of the good trea- 
sure of his heart, bringeth forth that which is good." 

What then is this good treasure of the heart — this inner 

1 Matt. vi. 3. 2 Matt. -.16. ' Matt. vii. 22, 23. 



86 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

essence of Religion ? Is the heart mere feeling — the seat 
of emotion only ? Modern physiology so distinguishes it 
from the brain as the seat of thought ; but in the language 
of the Hebrews the heart was also the seat of intelligence 
and of the moral faculties and affections ; a man thought 
in his heart, ] he purposed in his heart ; 2 he turned his 
heart this way and that ; 3 and so the Understanding and 
the "Will, as well as susceptibilities and emotions, were com- 
prised in the heart ; this was the center of self-determina- 
tion, and hence of moral character and spiritual life. In 
the same sense the heart was spoken of by Christ as em- 
bodying all the constituents of moral life ; and therefore, 
the Religion that is in and of the heart must be conceived 
of as a matter of intelligent principle, of voluntary de- 
termination, and of devout feeling. These together con- 
stitute the heart — the moral substance of the man — an- 
swering to the stock and sap of the tree. An analysis of 
His teaching on this point gives the following results : 

True Religion is an inward principle of holy living, 
through consecration to a holy God. This was the root- 
idea of the law given at Sinai, underlying each particular 
precept ; for the commandments that refer to specific out- 
ward actions — enjoining particular duties and forbidding 
particular sins — are all founded in and governed by the 
preamble " I am the Lord thy God," and the first declara- 
tion " Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." The 
acknowledgment of this one only God — the Lord Jehovah, 
the living one, thy God — the personal Spirit who is the 
Creator and Lord of the human spirit, who has a right of 
possession in every living soul, and who only should be 
confessed as God and Lord ; who is set forth as the maker 
of heaven and earth, and the giver of the earth to man for 
his abode ; who is a holy and jealous God, visiting ini- 

1 Is. x. 7 ; 1 Chron. xxix. 18 ; Is. xxxii. 4 ; Gen. xvii. 1-17 ; Job xii. 3. 
3 1 Sam. xiv. 7 : Is. x. 7 : lxiii. 4. 3 Job xv. 12 j Is. xliv. 20. 



THE OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION SPIRITUAL. 87 

quity, yet multiplying mercies to them that love Him, a 
God whose very name must be had in reverence and never 
lightly spoken — the acknowledgment of this one spiritual, 
holy, supreme Lord, allegiance to His majesty, obedience 
to His authority as holy, just and true — this principle lay 
at the foundation of the decalogue, and of the whole 
system of religion set forth in the Old Testament. The 
Eternal, Almighty Holy Spirit, the Creator and Lord of 
all, is here set before man not simply as an object of con- 
templation, to be admired as the highest conception of the 
Divinity that the intellect can attain to — but as having 
direct personal relations with the human spirit as His own 
image, as having a claim upon mankind severally for wor- 
ship and allegiance, and as seeking to draw each indivi- 
dual soul into the conscious, loving, faithful relationship 
of a child of God. To recognize this spiritual and Holy 
Being not simply as existing but existing in that relation, 
to acknowledge His rightful authority, to accept His law, 
and to devote the soul to Him in a holy, loving obedience 
— this inner principle of serving God is the sum and sub- 
stance of the Decalogue, and of the Religion of the Old 
Testament. All offerings and sacrifices, all prayers and 
alms, all Sabbaths and ceremonies were worse than worth- 
less without this. 

This fundamental principle of the Jewish theocracy had 
become well nigh obsolete under the mass of forms and 
traditions that men had heaped upon it; but Christ restored 
this as the first commandment in the code of the kingdom 
of God as His spiritual commonwealth. He did not abro- 
gate nor in any wise modify this original conception of 
Religion. To suppose that Christ relaxed the obligation 
of this principle of spiritual consecration in favor of some 
easier, lower type of piety expressed through faith as mere 
feeling, is a spiritual conceit and doctrinal error of most 
dangerous tendency. In the Christian system faith does 



88 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

not displace nor qualify the principle of holy obedience ; it 
encourages us to trust in Christ for the forgiveness of sins, 
thus atoning for our lack of obedience in the past, and to 
look to Christ for help in obedience for the future. Perfect 
faith will conduce to perfect obedience; for the rule and 
standard of Religion as presented in the words of Jesus, is 
identical with that which underlies the Decalogue — an 
inward principle of holy living through consecration to 
the will of a holy God. 

This was His own rule of life as the perfect man : " I 
seek not Mine own will, but the will of the Father which 
hath sent Me." 1 " I came down from heaven, not to do 
Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me." 2 " My 
meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish 
His work." 3 This was the deep, constant, controlling 
principle in the active obedience of Jesus Christ, and on 
the side of passive obedience it was the same : " Not My 
will but Thine be done." And though He covers our 
disobedience by His righteousness, and takes away our 
sins by His cross, and offers to our weakness the helping- 
hand of faith, He accords to His disciples no lower type 
of Religion than that which He illustrated, no lower rule 
of life than that which He observed. Nay rather did He 
put new life and emphasis into the fundamental principle 
of the decalogue as the law of His own kingdom : for He 
compressed the ten commandments into that one rule of 
holy obedience and consecration, and crowded this home 
upon the heart, saying : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all 
thy mind." 4 We cannot go deeper than this for a founda- 
tion of Religion, we cannot rise higher than this for a 
standard of life, we can have nothing broader, fuller, more 
complete and final as a spirit of consecration. It is the 
most spiritual conception of Religion that the philosopher 
l Matt, xxii, 3?, s John vi, 38, 8 j Q hn iy, 34. * Matt. xxii. 37. 



RELIGION THE ABIDING CHOICE OF GOD. 89 

can form, and at the same time the most simple and practi- 
cal rule of piety that can be given to a child. This princi- 
ple settled within the soul as the one aim and law of its 
life is the " good treasure of the heart/ 7 out of which all 
good things are brought forth. 

This principle supposes the free, intelligent choice of 
God and His service as the soul's supreme delight: its 
choice as an abiding state of preference, in distinction 
from particular acts of volition, yet including these and 
imparting to them a decisive character as acts of holy love. 

Where true Religion is, there the soul has elected God 
as its supreme good ; has accepted God as its ideal of ex- 
cellence ; has enthroned God as the Sovereign of its acts, 
its thoughts, and its desires ; and it abides in this its 
supreme choice as its satisfying rest and portion. As a 
state of preference this is the permanent choice of the soul, 
that underlies, and with more or less of conscious de- 
termination influences, all the choices and actions of the 
mind, and so gives character to the whole man. 

This elective principle carries along with it the feelings 
of the heart. It is not a dry intellectual state, though it 
may seem dry when analyzed for purposes of definition ; 
neither is it a cold, stiff purpose of the will, though its 
value and durability as a principle require that it shall 
take the form of fixed rigid resolution ; but feeling enters 
into the choice, animates the purpose, keeps the resolution 
all aglow. For the choice which the soul makes in Re- 
ligion is not simply a choice of opinions, nor a choice of 
systems, nor a choice of ends personal to itself, but the 
choice of an object of affection, even of its highest love : 
the choice is itself affection going forth in the act of will, 
as the dominant love of the heart. Not duty, nor fear as 
toward God in His Majesty, nor simply approbation in the 
contemplation of the divine excellence ; but love it is that 
inspires the deep principle, the fixed purpose of the soul to 



90 THE THEOLOGY OF CHKIST. 

serve and honor God in holy living. , Thus Religion ab- 
sorbs all the powers and affections of the soul. 

But that which gains this complete possession of the 
man spiritually also controls him practically. This deep 
inward principle, this sublime spiritual conception, this 
supreme absorbing purpose, this one dominant engrossing 
affection, is also a life-power. The soul does not shut 
itself up within itself, as in a temple, to worship the Un- 
seen, the Absolute, and keep its Religion as a thing sepa- 
rate and sacred from the life ; but that which is rooted so 
deep within and nourished with such warmth of love, 
blossoms forth upon the world, sheds abroad its fragrance, 
and drops upon every side its golden fruit. The good 
tree, by the law of its nature — all the forces of its consti- 
tution and its life conjoining — brings forth good fruit ; and 
so the good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, 
bringeth forth good things ; and as the quality of the fruit 
speaks for the tree, so the good deeds testify of the char- 
acter. " By their fruits ye shall know them." * 

This doctrine of good fruits does not at all conflict with 
Christ's condemnation of ostentation in religion, in Matt, 
vi. 1-7. What He there objected to was not the bare 
publicity of the act, but publicity as a motive to the act ; — 
praying " to be seen of men," giving alms " to be seen of 
men " — performing the most sacred duties in a way to at- 
tract attention, personating piety with a view to get a re- 
putation for piety — this it was that Jesus condemned. 
But the opposite of religious ostentation is not hiding one's 
light under a bushel, concealing religious principle and 
feeling so as not even to be suspected of it, avoiding reli- 
gious conversation and whatever might bring the repute 
of godliness. The command of Christ to His disciples is ; 
" Let your light so shine before men, that they may see 
your good works, and glorify your Father which is in 

l Matt. vii. 16. 



RELIGION TESTED BY ITS FR¥ITS. 91 

heaven." The shining is the beauty of a translucent char- 
acter : the light shines through because it is within ; and 
it shines simply because it is there. It is not a calcium 
light hung out now and then to dazzle passers by — but 
pure sunlight, which shines because it is. The religious 
principle being seated within, and having control of the 
understanding, the will, and the affections, is the life of 
the whole man. The tree being of good stock, sound, 
healthy, and well-nourished with sap, brings forth good 
fruit ; and the true Religion is known, not by the profes- 
sions it makes, nor the forms it adopts, but by the influ- 
ence it has upon the spirit and conduct of the man, upon 
his habits and actions, and by the positively good things 
that he does, under its living inspiration, as naturally and 
as regularly as the tree brings forth fruit — " his own 
fruit," the fruit natural and proper to itself. " The good 
man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth 
that which is good." 

The test that Christ applied to the religious professions 
of individuals, may be applied with equal fairness to his 
own system of Religion : — this also may be tested by its 
fruits. We have seen how, under the power of the reli- 
gious idea and the impulse of religious feeling, mankkid 
distorted and exaggerated particular elements and features 
of Religion, and produced a cold intellectual abstraction, 
an ideal worship of fancy or taste, a pretentious self-right- 
eous charity, an elaborate and cumbersome ritualism, a mon- 
strosity of the imagination and the senses, a monastic and 
ascetic pietism ; and how utterly human wisdom failed of 
realizing to itself the conception of a spiritual and holy 
God, and a spiritual and holy consecration, so as to render 
this a controlling power in the life. But Religion as in- 
terpreted by Christ fills the highest reach of Reason in re- 
spect of the nature of God ; strips Imagination of uncouth 
images and morbid fears, and adorns it with new beauties 



92 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

and glories in the realm of the spiritual ; purifies the Af- 
fections, consecrates the Will ; puts soul and unction into 
every Form of worship, puts life and love into every 
Charity ; makes the whole man, body, soul, and spirit, a 
consecrated vessel of the divine grace, a consecrated dwell- 
ing of the divine Spirit, a consecrated channel of the 
divine will ; and this by bringing the man into such near 
and loving relations with God, that this limited, depend- 
ent, and imperfect human spirit is in accord with that 
infinite, absolute, and perfect Spirit who fills immensity 
with His presence, and makes heaven glorious and blessed 
with His holy love. The Religion that so leads man up 
to God, and so brings God into fellowship with man, must 
have come down from heaven. By its fruits we know it 
to be divine. 



CHAPTEK VIII. 

THE SPIRITUALITY OF WORSHIP. 

From the interior essence of religion as a life we pass to 
its outward expression in acts of reverence toward God. 
Christ laid down a formula of worship based upon the true 
conception of the divine being : — " The hour cometh, and 
now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father 
in spirit and in truth ; for the Father seeketh such to wor- 
ship Him. God is a spirit ; and they that would worship 
Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." x It is an 
axiom of the Christian faith that the mode of worship 
must correspond with the essence of God, which is spiritual, 
and the feeling of the worshiper must correspond with the 
character of God, which is paternal. What that essential 
nature of God is which is declared by the term spirit, must 
be denned largely by negatives. A spirit is not physical, 
not corporeal, not tangible, not visible, as these properties 
are attributed to forms of matter ; nevertheless, we conceive 
of a spirit as a living substance, and as possessing both in- 
telligence and personality. The term nvzhfia was applied 
to the Father by Christ in the most absolute sense. The 
Septuagint had made this word familiar to Jewish readers 
as descriptive of the Spirit of God acfing in creation and 
prophecy. But Jesus said God is spirit, pure spirit, thus 
denning His essence in respect of its immateriality; and the 
argument is, "God being pure spirit cannot dwell in parti- 
cular spots or temples ; cannot require, nor be pleased with, 
earthly material offering, nor ceremonies as such ; on the 

1 John iv. 23, 24. 

93 



94 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

other hand, is only to be approached in that part of our 
being which is spirit, — and even there, inasmuch as He is 
pure and holy, with no by-ends nor hypocritical regards, 
but in truth and earnestness." * In the ever-memorable 
words of Augustine, " If thou wouldst pray in the temple 
pray within thyself: but first be thou the temple of 
God." 2 

God is spirit. Jesus announced this sublimest concep- 
tion of the nature of God, without defining it; announced 
it to a plain woman without simplifying it to her compre- 
hension ; left it to go upon record without solving the mys- 
tery that it contains. Yet as He was stating the funda- 
mental principle of religious worship, to govern His fol- 
lowers for all time, it is fair to assume that He used the 
term spirit in a sense sufficiently intelligible to His hearers 
for the practical application of His rule. He would 
hardly have laid down for universal guidance in a matter 
of universal obligation, a proposition that could not be 
translated into the common ideas of men. 

Our notion of spirit arises from our consciousness of 
understanding, of personality, and of power — conceptions 
that we attach to the Ego, the conscious self, in distinction 
from the material body with which this is invested. The 
Jewish scriptures had made familiar to the common mind 
this conception of spirit as an immaterial substance, pos- 
sessing consciousness, understanding, personality, will, 
energy — for they ascribe to the nieufia all spiritual func- 
tions, and distinguish it alike from the body, and from the 
soul, the animating principle of the body. It is the spirit 
in man that has understanding, that is capable of moral 
affections, that is the image of God, the inspiration of the 
Almighty, and this shall return unto the God who gave it, 

i Alford on John iv. 23. 
2 In templo vis orare, in te ora. Sed prius esto templum Dei, quia ille in 
templo suo exaudiet orantem. 



SPIRIT REPRESENTS PERSONALITY. 95 

when the dust shall return to the earth as it was. l The 
same scriptures speak likewise of spirits as existing in a 
higher condition than man, and possessing higher capaci- 
ties than are given to man in his present state. These are 
incorporeal, so far as cognizance of the senses goes ; yet 
they are described under human modes of conception, as 
possessing powers of vision, of motion, and of action, vastly 
superior to any attainable by man. This idea of a spirit 
as a higher order of being was common among the Jews in 
the time of Christ. Philo believed in good and evil 
angels, and that these were identical in substance with the 
souls of men, though disconnected from bodies. 2 Jesus re- 
cognized the common belief in an order of spirits, when He 
said to His disciples after his crucifixion, — " A spirit hath 
not flesh and bones as ye see me have." 3 

In declaring that God was pure spirit Christ gave no 
countenance to the pantheistic notion of the divinity as 
diffused in space or as the soul of the universe. On the 
contrary, He at the same time defined both the individual- 
ity and the personality of God, in the formula of worship ; 
— " they that worship Him" This infinite Sj)irit is to be 
approached by the human spirit, as a personal Intelligence. 
Moreover the name Father ascribes to God relations and 
affections such as pertain only to personality. 

Because God is spirit men must worship Him, and not 
any material representation of Him ; must worship Him, 
and not any place where He is supposed to be ; and they 
must not even worship Him in any one place alone, as if 
He were embodied or contained in that place, or were to be 
found only there. This was the point of His reply to the 
woman of Samaria : — " The hour cometh, when ye shall 
neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship 
the Father :" 4 — then true worshipers will not resort to 

1 Ec. xii. 7. * Philo Judaeus on the Giants. 

8 Luke xxiv. 39. * John iv. 21. 



96 THE THEOLOGY OF CHEIST. 

either with the feeling that the place gives validity or 
sanctity to the act of worship. This did not imply that 
there had been no sincere, real worship at Jerusalem or 
Gerizim ; for the contrast was not so much between the 
true and the false, as between the perfect ideal and a 
shadowy approximation. By the true worshipers are in- 
tended not only such as worship in sincerity of spirit, but 
those that worship according to the true and perfect ideal. 
" The worship of God in its highest conception, is that 
which is most homogeneous with the divine nature. Now 
God is spirit, and as such, elevated above space and time ; 
hence, the devotion which is in spirit, uttering itself in- 
dependently of time and place, never ceasing, subject to no 
external conditions, carried on in the inner sanctuary of 
man, constitutes the only worship which corresponds to 
its ideal." l 

But was this saying of Christ concerning worship in 
the spirit intended to disparage outward worship, and to 
foreshadow its abolition under a higher purer conception of 
Keligion ? The whole tenor of His life and doctrine for- 
bids such an inference. Jesus Himself prayed openly and 
audibly in the presence of His disciples. The prayer re- 
corded at length in the seventeenth chapter of John's 
gospel was an act of worship, and was rendered not in ac- 
cordance with any Jewish form, but by Jesus as the 
founder of the new dispensation about to be committed to 
His disciples. He also taught His disciples to pray, and 
how to pray ; and the brief form of prayer that He gave 
to them was adapted to be used in a collective act of wor- 
ship : " Our Father : give us our daily bread." And 
moreover Christ gave the assurance of a special blessing to 
those who should unite in worship, and meet for that pur- 
pose in His name : " If two of you shall agree on earth as 
touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for 

1 ©lshausen, C©mm. in loc. 



THE USES OF OUTWARD WORSHIP. 97 

them of my Father which is in heaven : for where two or 
three are gathered together in my Name, there am I in 
the midst of them." l He also distinctly contemplated 
and provided for the association of His disciples as a 
Church, for worship and communion, and ordained sacra- 
ments to be therein observed. After His resurrection, He 
met with His disciples in what appears to have been a 
stated assembly for religious worship upon the first day 
of the week. 

If outward worship is made an end in itself, if all 
thought and care are concentrated upon the manner of the 
outward act, with the feeling that when this is regularly 
performed the worship is accomplished — this is wholly at 
variance with Christ's doctrine of true spiritual worship. 

If again, the outward worship is regarded as a means to 
an end, if by the law of association, and by the suggestion 
of spiritual truth through appropriate symbols, it serves to 
educate the mind in religious thought and feeling — as was 
the design of the Jewish ritual — these ends are legitimate 
and valuable, though such a conception of worship falls 
below the ideal enunciated by Christ. 

In its highest and best relations, outward worship is the 
GKpression and exponent of the inward frame and feeling 
of the worshiper. The feeling of devotion gives to worship 
an unlimited universality of utterance, and renders natural 
and fit the outward form. 

This feeling should lead one to approach God as a 
Father. This name presents to the heart the moral and 
sympathetic aspect of the divine Being, as the term spirit 
presents to the understanding the conception of His essential 
nature. This Spirit, though infinite in His own nature, is 
not at an infinite remove from us in space nor in feeling, 
but is a loving Father, who thinks upon us, cares for us, 
and seeks us, desiring the communion of our spirits with 

iMatt. xviii 19. 

7 



98 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

Himself. This enunciation meets the longing of the more 
devout and spiritual minds of pagan antiquity for a near 
and conscious intercourse with God. Said Dio Chrysostom, 
" There exists in all men an eager longing to adore and 
worship the gods as nigh. For as children, torn from 
father and mother, feel a powerful and affectionate longing, 
often stretch out their hands after their absent parents, and 
often dream of them; so the man who heartily loves the 
gods for their benevolence towards us and their relationship 
with us, desires to be continually near them and to have 
intercourse with them ; so that many barbarians, ignorant 
of the arts, have called the very mountains and trees gods, 
that they might recognize them as nearer to themselves." * 
But Christ would bring God nearer than the mountain, 
nearer than the temple, in the spiritual, living, reciprocal 
intercourse of the father and the child. In its longing 
to localize the Deity, Paganism materialized Him — first 
personifying the powers and effects of nature as representa- 
tives of the Divinity, and finally transferring to these its 
whole conception of God. There is the same tendency in 
the materialistic Pantheism of modern times — to resolve 
the Divinity into a law, a force, a principle, an essence, or 
at best a soul resident in nature; but this while bringing 
God nigh, in a sense, yet takes away the value of the 
nearness by robbing Him of personality, which alone 
renders worship reasonable and communion possible. True 
worship must be founded upon the spirituality of God. 
"His being a spirit declares what He is; his other perfec- 
tions declare what kind of spirit He is. All God's perfec- 
tions suppose Him a spirit: all center in this: His wisdom 
does not suppose Him merciful, or His mercy suppose Him 
omniscient; there may be distinct notions of those attributes, 
but all suppose Him to be of a spiritual nature. If we do 
not render to God that spiritual worship which corresponds 

1 Dio Chrysost. Orationes, xii. 



THE WORSHIP OF SPIRIT TO SPIRIT. 99 

to His own nature, a statue upon a tomb with eyes and 
hands lifted up, offers as good and true a service as we." l 

In its conception of worship as a spiritual act addressed 
to a spiritual being, Christianity puts into a simple and 
universal formula the deepest conclusions of philosophy. 
It assumes the great truth embodied in the organization of 
matter under existing forms of order and beauty, and in 
the arrangement of diverse and conflicting physical laws to 
effect one common purpose — that a supreme intelligence, a 
spiritual power, gave to the universe its existence and its 
laws. What natural theology thus argues, Christ declared 
as a first axiom of religion; — God is Spirit. Whence it 
follows, since God is the Creator of the Universe, it is ab- 
surd to suppose that His own essence can be bounded by a 
temple, or ministered unto by material offerings; and since 
God is the Father of all existing intelligences, it is absurd 
to represent Him by any material image, or to worship Him 
in any other way than by an intelligent homage, obedience 
and love. " They that worship Him must worship Him 
in spirit and in truth." 

The nature of man requires this spiritual homage to the 
Father of spirits. Reason and self-respect demand that man, 
who is essentially a spiritual and not an animal being, 
shall recognize the spirituality of his Creator, and worship 
God with his rational and voluntary powers. 

He degrades himself when he represents his Creator by 
anything lower in the scale of existence than his own soul, 
or renders to God a mere service of form. Worship is the 
homage, the adoration, the reverent and loving devotion of 
man as a free spiritual intelligence toward God as the 
Father of Spirits, infinite in His nature and perfect in His 
holiness. Such worship recognizes God's absolute inde- 
pendence, His rightful sovereignty, His glorious moral 
perfection ; and is rendered by one spiritual nature unto 

J Charnock on the Divine Attributes. 



100 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

another spiritual nature that infinitely transcends it in 
power and majesty, that infinitely excels it in purity and 
virtue. Not hands but hearts must worship God ; not 
wood and stone but living souls must furnish His abode. 
This doctrine, however, must be taken in connection with 
the doctrine of the new birth which underlies the whole 
conception of the kingdom of God ; for " man is not born 
as a temple of God, nor can he make himself one, but can 
only be restored to that eminence by the Spirit, whom the 
Son of God communicates to his soul." l 

The formula of Jesus touching worship is a distinct pro- 
test against Ritualism as claiming to represent the Chris- 
tian idea of worship. I would not question the sincerity 
of a worship rendered through elaborate forms; but. the 
Ritual does not constitute either Christianity or worship, 
and the bowings and genuflexions, the attitudes and cross- 
ings, the vestments and candles, are not properly Christian 
worship. True worship may use forms for its expression, 
and indeed will naturally appropriate forms of some kind as 
its language ; but by just as much as the place and the 
form of worship come to be looked upon as essential to the 
genuineness and acceptableness of the worship, by so much 
does the form overlay and hinder the free action of the 
soul toward God. If the form of worship appeals to the 
senses more powerfully than the truth itself appeals to the 
soul, if the studied artistic effect of the worship diverts the 
feeling from spiritual emotion to aesthetic sentiment, then is 
the form set above the spirit, and there is danger that the 
living essence of worship will be wanting. The eye may 
be charmed with the architecture of the cathedral, the ear 
entranced with the music of the organ and the choir, the 
very soul suffused with the perfume of incense, and yet 
while every sense is thus wrapped in the outward similitude 
of worship, there may be no true spirit of worship in the 

1 Neander. 






SPIRITUALITY NOT SENTIMENTALISM. 101 

heart. And if once the mind is imbued with the notion 
that salvation depends upon the place or the form of wor- 
ship, it will exaggerate the most insignificant incident of 
that form into an essential of its own life. 

But on the other hand the spirituality of worship must 
be distinguished from mere sentimentality in religion. 
The poetry of Byron abounds in apostrophes to nature in 
the vein of worship. Novelists of the worst school of 
French license, will pause in a tale of infamy to utter 
some pious feeling touching the stars, the trees, the 
flowers ; to invoke the sea, the breeze, the mountain, the 
«loud, the moon — Nature in whole or in detail — as the 
personification of the religious sentiment; and after this 
ebullition of devotion, will proceed to deform virtue and 
to glorify vice- Confucius teaches that by meditating in 
the seclusion of the mountains and water-falls, man re- 
turns to the primitive goodness of his nature ; and thus the 
magnificent growths of the forests and the delicate beauties 
of the garden and field become moral tonics to the soul. 
Now no moralist has excelled Christ in lessons of wisdom 
derived from nature, and no poet has surpassed Him in 
delicacy of perception for the beauty of flowers, the waters, 
the sky, and for the traits and habits of sentient creatures : 
and therefore it is foreign to the genius of Christianity to 
disparage a taste for the beautiful in the physical creation, 
or to undervalue this as tributary to the religious senti- 
ment. But that enthusiasm for nature which never speaks 
the name of God, which expends itself upon effects without 
thought of the First Cause of all, which even substitutes 
an effect for the cause as an object of religious emotion, has 
no one element in common with the spiritual devotion 
that Christ declared to be the only true worship. It is at 
best but a more refined idolatry, reproducing in the 
mysticism of the pantheist and the dream-talk of the poet, 
the homage of the ancient Greek and Roman, or of the 



102 THE THEOLOOY OF CHRIST. 

modern Hindoo and Chinaman to material forms as repre- 
senting some beneficent property or power in nature. 

The* spirituality of worship set forth by Christ is a 
feature of His religion that adapts it for universal diffu- 
sion. Like the light Christianity can go anywhere ; like 
the air men need only to breathe it. Its worship requires 
but these two factors : — a spiritual and holy God revealed 
as a loving Father, and an humble, loving, trusting mind, 
that looks up to Him in reverence and obedience. The 
Jew coming like Simeon in faith and holy expectation, to 
sacrifice amid the splendor of the temple and the pomp of 
its ritual ; the Gentile who, like the devout Cornelius, 
amid the distractions of military life, without temple or 
altar, yet feared God with all his house and prayed to 
Him always ; the prisoner Paul in the guard-room of 
Nero's palace; the exile John in the rocky solitudes of 
Patmos ; the missionary apostle, a solitary witness for the 
living God in face of the temples, shrines and divinities 
of Athens ; the throng gathered at Troas to hear his fare- 
well words, and break the bread of Christian fellowship ; 
the martyrs who entered the arena to be devoured of wild 
beasts, praying as they went ; the saints who hid them- 
selves in the catacombs of Rome and worshiped by the 
light of the sacred lamp ; Luther, in his monk-cell crying 
to God from the depths of an awakened spirit ; Tauler, in 
the grand cathedral of Strasbourg, in the midst of altars, 
pictures, images, incense, and the pomp of a corrupted 
worship, proclaiming the true light, love, and joy of the 
Holy Ghost within the soul ; the Waldenses in the fast- 
nesses of Piedmont ; the Huguenots in the caves of the 
Pyrenees ; the Covenanters on the lonely heath or the 
dreary shore ; the Pilgrims on the houseless island, keep- 
ing the Sabbath in snow and sleet ; these all, and whoever 
with singleness of devotion has worshiped the Father, 
have kept up through the ages the undying succession of 



THE SOUL THE LIVING TEMPLE. 103 

true worshipers. The proudest monument of pagan wor- 
ship is a shattered ruin upon the Acropolis of Athens; 
the temple at Jerusalem with its goodly stones is buried 
under the Haram of the mosque of Omar ; the antiquarian 
digs for its foundation; the Jews wail beside the tradi- 
tional stones of its wall ; but He with whom there is 
neither Greek nor Jew, who dwells in humble, believing 
souls, seeks and owns as true worshipers all who, in what- 
ever tongue, cry " Abba, Father." 



CHAPTEE IX. 

A LIVING PROVIDENCE. 

Years ago, when the cloud that hung over the African 
race in the United States was so thick that there appeared 
no possibility of deliverance, Mr. Frederick Douglas called 
for a bloody insurrection as the only hope of liberty; and 
even that seemed rather the frenzy of despair. Depicting 
the wrongs of his people with an eloquence that awed his 
hearers, telling tales of horror that made one's hair stand 
on end, he cried for the retribution of blood. Friends, 
counsels, measures, events had failed to further their cause, 
or had been linked in connivance with the wrong; patience 
and hope were utterly gone, and there remained only the 
last struggle of desperation. When he ceased speaking, 
there was a hush of horror and dread over the assembly, 
that seemed to confirm his forebodings. Directly in front 
of the platform sat a tall gaunt figure, black as the night 
that Douglas had depicted: — a woman who, had she 
lived in Africa, might have passed for a sorceress or a 
sibyl, but who had won repute among her people as a 
prophetess taught of God. Her very name she claimed to 
have received by inspiration — Sojourner Truth — a type of 
her mission : " Truth" because she was appointed to give 
the Lord's testimony; "Sojourner" because she was to go 
from place to place testifying as she went, and sojourning 
only long enough to testify. Fastening upon the speaker 
her keen black eye, now fired with a holy indignation, 
and raising her finger as in prophetic admonition, she cried 
in a voice that pierced every ear, "Frederick, is God deadf 
104 



PROVIDENCE IN THE OVERTHROW OF SLAVERY. 105 

Like a flash of lightning that question scattered a darkness 
that all had felt. Faith, patience, hope, courage came back 
with the reviving of the thought of a living God. 

O o o 

The years have confirmed Sojourner's faith. When the 
national government had surrendered itself in every de- 
partment to the intrigues or the assumptions of the slave- 
power; when Congress had enacted the Fugitive-Slave 
law, and the President had made haste to enforce it by 
Marshals, Commissioners and United States troops; when 
the Missouri Compromise was repealed, and the Supreme 
Court decided that slaves could be held as property in the 
territories of the United States, and the Chief Justice gave 
the sanction of his office to the stigma that "black men 
had no rights which white men were bound to respect;" it 
seemed indeed that the cause of the slave was hopeless, and 
that nothing remained to him but the recklessness of des- 
peration. But God was not "dead." The very audacity 
that sought first to control the general government and 
then to subvert it, overreached itself; and we have seen 
slavery abolished by proclamation of the President, and 
the army of the United States employed for its over- 
throw; Congress that had been the tool of the Slave- 
power, dictating to the States of the Slave Confederacy 
measures of justice to the freed men ; those States recognizing 
the political equality of the blacks as the condition of their 
own restoration to political privileges in the Union; the 
Constitution that had been made a shield for slavery, 
amended so as to prohibit the exclusion of any citizen from 
the polls by reason of race, color, or former state of servi- 
tude; the President congratulating the country upon this 
momentous change of policy as the most important event 
since the foundation of the government, and taking pains 
to efface the stigma that the Supreme Court had affixed to 
the black race. * A retribution so thorough and particular, 

1 President Grant's proclamation of the ratification of the Fifteenth Amend' 
stent. 



106 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

a revolution so complete and circumstantial, effected by 
means above human foresight or control, gives emphasis to 
the faith of the sable prophetess in the living God. 

Yet there are those who style themselves "friends of 
progress/' and assume even the ambitious role of the priest- 
hood of Humanity, who would deprive the poor and op- 
pressed of this kindling thought, this great and blessed 
hope, and would make God dead alike to good or evil in 
the world. Not content to reduce all physical phenomena 
to a system of fixed laws, which admit of no superintend- 
ing Power, and with which no volitions, either natural or 
supernatural, interfere, they would bring human society 
and history into the same category, concluding all the 
phases of national growth and decay, and the actions of in- 
dividuals in all the varieties of human conduct, by physi- 
cal conditions that determine the development of individu- 
als, of nations, and of races according to certain subtile, 
perhaps uninterpretable, but nevertheless uniform and all- 
controlling laws. This was the theory upon which Mr. 
Buckle projected his History of Civilization: — that "the 
actions of men, being determined solely by their antece- 
dents, must have a character of uniformity, that is to say, 
must, under precisely the same circumstances, always issue 
in precisely the same results." So strong was his convic- 
tion that all human actions, including those that seem to be 
prompted by personal feelings — even marriages on the one 
hand, and crimes on the other — are determined by general 
laws, that he expressed his belief that "before another cen- 
tury the chain of evidence will be complete, and it will be 
as rare to find an historian who denies the undeviating regu- 
larity of the moral world, as it is now to find a philosopher 
who denies the regularity of the material world." 1 This 
moral order, however, in Mr. Buckle's meaning, is not the 
Providential ruling of the world according to a divine plan, 

1 Hhtory of Civilization in England, I. pp. 14, 24. 



POSITIVISM AT ISSUE WITH CHRIST. 107 

but the development of mind and of Nature, eaeh by the 
laws of its own organization, and with " a reciprocal modifi- 
cation from which all events must necessarily spring.'' Mr. 
Buckle's admirers have sought to relieve him of the charge 
of Fatalism; yet when this school of Positivists speak of 
" the Infinite " and " the Absolute/' it is the infinite and 
absolute in Idea or in Law — some vast generalization of the 
phenomena of the universe under a law of correlation — and 
not an infinite Spirit, who created the universe, and now 
upholds and governs it through laws that are the mute ex- 
pressions of His own will and power. Either the Person- 
ality of God is denied altogether, and the Deity is only the 
highest formula for the generalization of existing laws, or 
if His personality is admitted, He is conceived of as 
separated from the actual course of affairs, and existing if 
not in the state of inactivity attributed to Buddha, at least 
in the attitude of non-intervention by any volition or act 
of His, direct or indirect, in the ongoing sequence of 
events. Thus Comte speaks of the doctrine of Providence 
as a transient theory, a makeshift of ignorance, which in 
the progress of science has been displaced by the discovery 
and the systematizing of laws. 

It is impossible to harmonize this world-scheme of the 
Positivists with the teachings of Christ. The displace- 
ment of Providence from the world, the denial of God's 
personal interest in His creatures and His superintendence 
over them as a present reality, is directly at variance with 
the doctrine of Jesus, who taught that His Father watches 
over all creatures and events, and is concerned in the 
affairs of men both individually and collectively. Upon 
most points it is easy to reconcile alleged differences 
between science and revelation ; and it may be assumed 
that there is no fact of science fairly proved that may not 
be reconciled with the Scriptures fairly interpreted. But 
the denial of a divine Providence in the world, present, 



108 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

personal, particular, cannot be reconciled with the teach- 
ings of Jesus ; and hence if He taught herein the truth of 
God, that materialistic theory which has no place for God 
in the ordering of affairs, must be false. It is of the first 
importance, therefore, to determine from the collation of 
His own words, what Christ did teach concerning Provi- 
dence. 

First Those physical phenomena which are commonly 
described as the course of nature, Christ represented as 
being under the direction and control of God, and as ex- 
pressing His purpose and will. "Love your enemies, 
bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, 
and pray for them which despitefully use you and perse- 
cute you, that ye may be the children of your Father 
which is in heaven : for He maketh His sun to rise on the 
evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on 
the unjust." x Now the sun rises with undeviating regu- 
larity — the diurnal revolution of the earth upon its axis 
causing that appearing and disappearing of the sun which 
we call sunrise and sunset. These laws are fixed and as- 
certained : and although the laws by which the rain falls 
are less definitely understood, the showers come not by 
chance, nor by miracle, but by law. And yet Jesus traced 
the rising of the sun and the falling of the rain, in the 
universality of their beneficence, to the purpose of God in 
so ordering them for the good of His creatures ; and He 
pointed to the uniformity of these events as an expression 
of the impartial goodness of our Heavenly Father, to be 
followed by us as an example. Now there is no force in 
the argument drawn from this illustration — that, by the 
impartiality of love, we should be perfect in the same way 
as our Father in Heaven is perfect — if the sun rises or the 
rain falls by laws of its own producing, or by eternal 

1 Matt. v. 44, 45. 



REGULAR SEQUENCE NOT EFFICIENT CAUSE. IOC 

laws, or by purely mechanical law, from which all idea of 
a designing will is shut out. 

In the phenomena of Nature we must be careful not to 
confound regularity of sequence with causation, or to mis- 
take uniformity for efficiency. Where one event invariably 
follows another in the same circumstances, we say there 
is a law of succession ; but it does not follow that the event 
next preceding is the efficient cause of its successor. Mere 
phenomena cannot be perpetually adduced to explain phe- 
nomena. The conception of causality requires an active 
will-power somewhere back of the apparent physical law. 
To Christ that will was ever present and ever active in all 
the ordinances of Nature. 

This He assumed when He taught us to pray to our 
Father in heaven, saying "Give us this day our daily 
bread." Now bread is procured by processes that obey es- 
tablished chemical, vital, and mechanical laws, both sepa- 
rately and in combination — the growth of the wheat, the 
harvesting, threshing, and winnowing, the grinding of the 
flour, the mixing of the dough, the baking of the bread — 
the agency of Nature uniting throughout with the agency 
of Man; and there is nothing apparent in the process of 
bread-making that cannot be referred to one or the other 
of these visible agents. But whence comes the power of 
heat and moisture, acting upon the soil and the seed to 
produce the living growth? whence the principle of fer- 
mentation? and whence the power of heat to convert the 
paste into bread? 

In looking at a grist-mill, the wheels, the gearing, the 
hopper, the stones, the bolter, one remarks the ingenuity 
of man in this machinery for grinding his flour; but the 
wood and iron of which the watar-wheel is made, the water 
that turns it, the stones that grind the meal, these are no 
more of man's providing than are his own mind and muscle 
that appropriate such materials to his use. Arid after all, 



110 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

that which grinds his flour is the sun: for the sun perpetu- 
ally gathers the moisture that forms the clouds, whose 
showers feed the stream that turns the mill. And so, back 
of all the ingenuity of man, and of all visible agencies of 
Nature, the doctrine of Christ refers us to our Heavenly 
Father as the giver of our bread, and bids us ask Him for 
it day by day. But one could not thus ash Nature for 
daily bread; since Nature has no intelligence nor will, nor 
conscious power of adaptation, in the processes by which 
she ministers to the sustenance of man. One can not pray 
to a law of physics or of chemistry as to a Father! The 
laws of Nature remove further back the point at which 
the will of God touches the whole process of providing 
our food, but these do not disconnect that process from the 
divine will and reduce it to a function of Nature. A father 
who grows his own grain and grinds his own wheat, liter- 
ally provides bread for his children; but one who does 
other business, is a merchant, a banker, a doctor, a lawyer, 
and buys all his bread of the baker, is none the less the 
giver of the daily bread of his household. A little boy 
lost in the streets of New York, and unable to tell where 
he lived, gave his father's name and said that he made 
bread. After a fruitless search among the bakers, it was 
discovered that the child's father was a merchant, -but was 
accustomed on leaving home for his business to say play- 
fully to the little fellow, "Now I must go and make some 
more bread for you." Yet he did make bread for his child 
as truly as if he had baked it. When a father goes away 
from home and leaves an order with the baker to supply 
the family during his absence, he still provides their daily 
bread ; and if he should prolong his absence for years, and 
simply send remittances to meet the necessities of his family, 
these intervening processes would not sever nor even sus- 
pend his personal agency as the provider. 

Now God is our Father; and the far-reaching arrange- 



PROVIDENCE UNIVERSAL AND PARTICULAR. Ill 

merits He has made through which we obtain our daily 
bread, cannot dissociate the provision for our wants from 
His loving thought and care. Both the constitution of 
man and the circumstances in which he acts are fairly 
included within the providential purposes of God. Man 
acts either from his own nature, or from the influence of 
circumstances, or from a combination of these two factors ; 
and He who created both man and nature with their 
mutual adaptations, can also bring them together in special 
adaptations, through His familiar and constant supervision 
of their several laws. And the fact of this personal divine 
agency in and through the ordinary phenomena of life, 
is fundamental in the doctrine of Christ concerning Provi- 
dence. 

Christ also taught the universality of this Providence 
over the kingdoms of Nature and of life. It is God who 
clothes the grass of the field, and gives to the lilies their 
beauty, though they toil not, neither do they spin. It is 
our heavenly Father who feedeth the ravens and the fowls 
of the air, though they sow not, neither do they reap nor 
gather into barns. 1 God gave to the birds their free un- 
caring nature, and the instinct by which they seek their 
food; and in the diversities of food made ready for the 
diversities of creatures are manifested a forethought and 
plan that argue an intelligent providence. The uniformity 
of this adaptation cannot account for the fact of the adap- 
tation ; and when we inquire why each bird and each beast 
seeks always and finds its own kind of food, there can be 
no better answer than that which Christ has given, " Your 
heavenly Father feedeth them." 

In discoursing of Providence, Jesus instanced the par- 
ticular care of God toward those that love Him and trust 
in His will. His argument from the universal care of 
God for the lower orders of creatures, the raven, the spar- 

i Matt. vi. 26-31. 



112 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

row, was that the children of God should so much the more 
trust in Him for all the wants of the body, and devote them- 
selves spiritually to His holy kingdom and will. "Are ye 
not much better than they? shall He not much more clothe 
you, O ye of little faith?" 1 The argument is from the 
less to the greater; — "therefore take no thought" — be 
not anxious about the necessaries of life, — "saying What 
shall we eat? or What shall we drink? or Wherewithal 
shall we be clothed? for your heavenly Father knoweth 
that ye have need of all these things." 2 To have any 
validity in logic, to give any encouragement to faith, this 
argument must proceed on the assumption that God takes 
immediate cognizance of the condition and wants of those 
who look to Him in trust, and arranges outward circum- 
stances for their advantage: for the counsel "Seek ye first 
the kingdom of God and His righteousness," is followed 
with the unqualified assurance "and all these things shall 
be added to you;" 3 — an assurance grounded in the fact 
that "your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of 
all these things" — "therefore take no thought for the 
morrow." 

The counsel that Jesus gave His disciples touching 
their deportment under danger, was based upon the same 
doctrine of God's personal care over His children. They 
were charged not to fear human enemies who could do 
them no real harm, and whose apparent power of mischief 
was under the restraint of their heavenly Father: — not 
even a sparrow is forgotten before God; and "the very 
hairs of your head are all numbered." 4 This same argu- 
ment Christ applied to Himself. When tempted of the 
devil, in the extremity of hunger, He refused to turn 
stones into bread, and confided in the loving care of His 

i Mat. vi. 30. 2 Mat. vi. 31, 32. 

3 Mat. vi. 32, 33. * Luke xii. 6, 7. 



NO FAVORITISM IN PROVIDENCE. 113 

Fatlier for the relief of His necessities. 1 Again, when 
Pilate sought to intimidate Him, saying, "Knowcst thou 
not that I have power to crucify thee," Jesus answered, 
" Thou couldst have no power at all against me, except it 
were given thee from above." 2 By this He meant not 
simply that the power of earthly rulers is derived from 
God as the supreme disposer of events ; but that Pilate 
had no present power of proceeding against Himself, 
except by the permission of His heavenly Father. His 
meaning was precisely the same as in that saying to Peter 
a few hours before, " Thinkest thou that I cannot now 
pray to my Father, and He shall presently give Me more 
than twelve legions of angels ? But how then shall the 
Scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be ? " 3 Jesus 
believed in the constant superintendence of His heavenly 
Father over all the events of His life : — constant, as opera- 
ting through the common established order of things, and 
particular, as adapting events to occasions, means to ends. 

What is sometimes called "special providence" may be 
special only in our recognition of it — special because the 
importance of the event to ourselves leads us to notice it 
as something extraordinary; but Christ taught that the 
Providence of God is not something occasional and excep- 
tional, but is as constant and particular as tlte care of a 
Father over his children : — special, therefore, only as 
being personal and particular. 

But Jesus did also include in His doctrine of Provi- 
dence the fact that, to accomplish particular ends, God does 
sometimes put -forth direct acts of control or intervention in 
human affairs. In view of the small number of preachers 
of the Gospel as compared with the work of evangeliza- 
tion, He instructed His disciples to " pray the Lord of the 
harvest that He would send forth laborers into the har- 

1 Matt. iv. 3, 4, 11. 2 j h n xix. 10, 11. 

3 Matt. xxri. 53, 54. 
8 



114 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

vest." 1 Now such a prayer could have force only upon 
the assumption that God does act directly in the affairs of 
this world, for particular interests, and shape men and 
means toward given ends. Again, in predicting the 
destruction of Jerusalem, Christ announced that as His 
own coming to judgment, and indicated to His disciples 
what would be the signs of that coming — directly connect- 
ing the war, famine and pestilence that did actually 
attend that terrible siege, with a divine retribution for the 
sins of the nation. He promised also safety and protec- 
tion to His own disciples, and declared that for their sakes 
the days of tribulation should be shortened. 2 All this 
came to pass by means apparently natural, but under the 
guidance of a supernatural power. 

The whole doctrine of Christ concerning the Providence 
of God teaches that this is a living reality, present, constant, 
universal, and particular, both mediate and immediate. 

This doctrine accords with the highest Reason, and gives 
a key to the course of Nature itself. For either we must 
believe in a Providence over the world that extends to the 
particular while it controls the universal, or allow the athe- 
istic notion of chance, or say that events can come to pass 
by laws or agencies beyond His knowledge or control, and 
therefore that His whole purpose of wisdom and beneficence 
in the creation is liable to be frustrated through causes out 
of sight or out of reach — that a broken rail may throw the 
train off the track, or a tiny borer under the keel may sink 
the ship. But in face of the evidence of final causes, 
strengthening the native belief in an intelligent Creator, it 
is impossible to refer the origin of the world to chance; 
and if chance did not produce the world, it cannot come in 
at this late day to divide its events with the Supreme 
Intelligence that shaped these at the first. To withdraw 
any class of events from the knowledge or the power of 

1 Matt is. 37, 3SL 2 Matt. xxiv. 22. 



LAWS NEED TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR. 115 

God, and declare these absolutely independent of His con- 
trol, would be to say that He had made a world He could 
not manage; and moreover, such is the inter-dependence 
of events, both great and small, and, on the broad scale of 
things, adverse and hostile events, permitted for awhile, 
are so often made to contribute to the very end they threat- 
ened to frustrate, or are overridden by some sublime and 
comprehensive movement — that the logical principles in- 
volved in creation, and the course of affairs in human 
history, shut us up to a belief in the providence of God as 
extending to all actual events. 

It does not relieve this necessity to deny a personal 
Providence, and fall back upon a system of general laws. 
These laws, incapable of originating themselves, can find 
the reason of their own existence only in the will of the 
all-wise and almighty Creator, who set them in order fore- 
seeing and including their working and results. Climb 
we never so high the ladder of second causes, at the top 
we find the Infinite stretching above and around us: the 
ladder is supported not by its own strength nor by the 
solidity of its foundation, but by an invisible hand from 
above; it is only by looking up that we can climb with 
safety, and if we take out a pin here and a rung there as 
insignificant or unnecessary, we shall break through and 
fall over into the abyss of Atheism. The doctrine of Provi- 
dence as taught by Christ differs equally from Fatalism 
and from Pantheism. It recognizes the personal care of 
our Heavenly Father, acting both through the laws that 
He has impressed upon Nature and apart from these, and 
thus it keeps Him in a constant connection of thought, 
feeling and will with the creatures of His hand. 

This doctrine of Providence harmonizes perfectly with 
our consciousness of free-will. Free-will is a fact of con- 
sciousness, and we can neither go back of the testimony of 
consciousness nor explain that away. We know that we 



116 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

have the power of choice, and that in moral action we 
might choose otherwise than as we do. Yet our free choice 
and action in any given case do not exclude this from the 
divine prevision as an event, since the certainty of an event 
as matter-of-fact to the mind of God cannot conflict with 
the free-agency of man in bringing to pass that event. 
Certainty and Freedom are not irreconcilable factors in the 
problem of life. The time and place of my birth, for in- 
stance, were determined in the Providence of God without 
my agency or even my consciousness. It was by His will 
that I began to live. But when I began to move by my 
own volition did I cease to sustain any relation to the will 
of God? Were the boundaries of His Providence limited 
by the nursery ? — and did I pass out from under the Provi- 
dential government of God the moment I began to act by 
my own will? That were absurd. But on the other hand, 
did God compel my actions, and above all compel my sin- 
ful actions? I know better; since consciousness assures me 
of my freedom, while common-sense instructs me as to His 
Providence. It is equally true that I am free and that 
God reigns. 

The doctrine of Providence taught by Christ harmon- 
izes also with the general laws of the physical world. The 
laws under which we generalize the orderly sequences of 
phenomena are thoughts or purposes of the Creator wrought 
into permanent links of succession ; — a stereotyped edition 
of certain divine ideas, continually renewed from the same 
plates. But is the whole of the divine nature bound up in 
these, and imprisoned by them ? These laws are the per- 
manent base for the operations of His Providence : as 
proofs of divine forethought for our welfare, they tend to 
give stability and confidence to our dependence upon 
Providence. To lay in fuel for the winter in the summer 
is to provide for the daily wants of one's family as really as 
by marketing every day ; — the one form of Providence does 



PROVIDENCE GIVES COURAGE TO FAITH. 117 

not preclude the other. Because God ministers to our ne- 
cessities so largely through a system of general laws, He is 
not thereby cut off from a living sympathy and care for us. 
It is still our Father in Heaven who gives us day by day 
our daily bread, and who delivers us from evil. 

The doctrine of Christ concerning the Providence of 
God furnishes a rational ground and motive for prayer. 
Under stress of want or danger it is an instinct of the soul 
to pray. But prayer is the merest superstition if there is 
no personal, acting, guiding Providence. Only in the be- 
lief that we have a Father who knows our wants and can 
relieve them, who thinks upon us, and will hear us, can 
we pray in faith. 

This doctrine encourages us to trust in God with child- 
like confidence and affection. Such a faith will lift the 
soul to the sublimity of absolute repose : not the repose of 
inaction or of indifference, but of that confidence in God's 
presence, power, wisdom, love, that frees the mind from 
all uneasiness or concern in respect to either the wants of 
the body or its own future. u Fear ye not, ye are of more 
value than many sparrows." This very confidence begets 
its own triumph. The faith of Sojourner Truth was as 
ready for her own necessities as for the sorrows of her peo- 
ple. Her child had been stolen and sold into slavery ; and 
she knew only in a vague, general way, that she must seek 
redress at the Court-house, and that for this money was 
required. She thought within herself, "God has money," 
and she made her application directly to Him. In her 
own graphic and pathetic story, "I didn't rightly know 
which way to turn ; but I went to the Lord, and I said to 
Him, l O Lord, ef I was as rich as you be, an' you was as 
poor as I be, I'd help you, you know I would ; an' oh ! do 
help me.' An' I felt sure that He would, an' He did." 

A man seeing her writhing in agony before the Court 
House, asked what was the matter, and directed her to 



118 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

friends who took up her case and pressed it until her child 
was recovered. This child-like simplicity of trust in the 
providence of God is authorized by the teachings of Christ. 
One may be too wise to admit a ground for it in his phil- 
osophy, too proud to admit a place for it in his own spirit ; 
one may love the world too much to be willing to relin- 
quish that, and making the kingdom of God his supreme 
desire, to trust his heavenly Father for his daily bread ; 
one may be so bent upon plans of his own that he cares 
nothing for Providence unless that can be enlisted in these ; 
but he that really believes what Christ has taught concern- 
ing our Father in heaven, he that exercises a true Chris- 
tian faith, will so trust in the Lord at all times, as to 
live without solicitude, in the constant exercise of gratitude 
and devotion. And how little should we know of grief if 
we had more of gratitude ! how little should we know of 
despondency, if we had more of devotion ! When we shall 
fully love, then only will we fully trust. 



CHAPTER X. 

OF PRAYER. 

As the instinct of prayer is an argument for a Provi- 
dence — since every aptitude of man's nature finds some 
corresponding adaptation in the system of things with 
which he is connected — so also is the fact of Providence 
the decisive warrant for prayer. The spontaneous impulse 
of the soul in peril, want, or fear, to invoke the aid of an 
unseen Power — that is to pray — encourages the belief that, 
distinct from physical laws and phenomena, there is a 
spiritual Power, able to modify or shape the course of 
things for our advantage, or to interpose His will in some 
direct counteraction to apparent evil. Why is man so 
constituted that in his helplessness he flies to the Infinite 
for succor, if all things move forward by inexorable law, 
and God has abandoned the world to fate ? Then prayer 
were but a mockery of human misery — the wounded, terri- 
fied bird, seeing the serpent about to spring upon it, and 
beating its breast wildly against the bars that shut it in. 
That very principle of relation by which science links 
events to their antecedents, and means to ends, should find 
in this normal tendency of the soul to look to a higher 
Power, a law of interaction by which prayer links the soul 
to God by the feeling of dependence, and brings God to 
the soul in the bestowal of help. > 

That devout philosopher, Schleiermacher, defined religion 
as the feeling of dependence upon the Absolute. When 
physical science has formulated all the known phenomena 
of Nature under invariable laws, and metaphysical science 

119 



120 THE THEOLOGY OF CHEIST. 

has systematized all the known phenomena of mind under 
categories of its own, and materialists have sought, by a 
process of mental physiology, to reduce the manifestations 
of intelligence to mere functions of the brain, there yet re- 
mains within the consciousness — to be called out upon 
emergencies of ignorance, of danger, of trouble, of want — 
the feeling of dependence upon a Something somewhere 
that is Absolute, that is above want, danger, or necessity, 
that is dependent upon nothing outside of itself, but can 
take upon itself the support of needy, dependent creatures. 
That feeling prompts to prayer, and prayer points to Pro- 
vidence. 

And so, upon the other hand, the fact of a Providence — 
the active guidance and superintendence of persons and 
events by a Spirit of infinite wisdom, power and bene- 
ficence, — gives a perfect warrant for prayer, makes it rea- 
sonable to pray, makes it hopeful to pray, makes prayer a 
reality, as the address of one conscious spirit to another 
conscious spirit, who knows the needs of the suppliant ; 
makes prayer a power, as the appeal of a dependent spirit 
to the Almighty Spirit who will help the needy when he 
crieth. Such was the doctrine of prayer that Christ taught 
to His disciples, and that He himself put in practice upon 
memorable occasions of His earthly life. 

At the foundation of His teaching on this subject was 
the conception of prayer as the direct address of the soul to 
God as its Father. " After this manner pray ye : Our 
Father which art in heaven." 1 " Enter into thy closet 
and pray to thy Father which is in secret." 2 As an en- 
couragement to prayer Christ referred to the readiness with 
which parents regard the requests of their children, and 
said, " If ye then being evil know how to give good gifts 
unto your children, how much more shall your Father 

i Matt. vi. 9. 2 Matt. vi. 6. 



PRAYER ADDRESSES A LIVING PERSON. 121 

which is in heaven give good things to them that ask 
Him." 1 

The prayers of Jesus Himself were direct addresses to 
His Father. " I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven 
and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the 
wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." 2 
" What shall I say ? Father, save me from this hour ? 
Father, glorify Thy name." 3 

The last prayer of Jesus for His disciples, was the audi- 
ble communion of His soul with His Father, whom He 
invoked by name, at each petition : 4 " Father, the hour is 
come :" " O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self." 
" Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom 
Thou hast given Me." " O righteous Father, the world 
hath not known Thee." In the extremity of His anguish 
in the garden, He prayed, " O my Father, if it be possible 
let this cup pass from Me :" 5 and from the cross He cried, 
" Father, forgive them." 6 This direct address to God as 
Father is a striking characteristic of Christian prayer. 
Human language cannot express all that this mode of ad- 
dress implies. 

"The Father" is a living person; the Father of our 
spirits a living Spirit; the Father of all, the living pos- 
sessor of all, who as the Creator has control over all beings 
and events. Therefore to pray to God as a Father is to 
recognize Him as in immediate relations to us personally, 
and to all that concerns us. One loses sight for the moment 
of all calculation of means and agencies, of secondary causes 
and intermediate laws, and sees only the great preponder- 
ating truth of the living Spirit, infinite in presence and 
power, who is above every law and nigh to every soul. 

But the mind does not rest in this conception. Prayer 
is more than imagining what God is ; more than meditating 

iMatt. vii. 11. 2 Matt. xi. 25. 3j h n x ii. 27,28. * John xrii. 
5 Matt. xxvi. 39. 6 Luke xxiii. 34. 



122 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

upon God; more than any subjective state or feeling pro- 
duced in us as the reflex influence of divine contemplation. 
In prayer the soul goes out to God ; it addresses God as 
one that can be reached by its supplications. The Father 
being not a principle nor a law, not an abstraction nor a 
poetic name, but a living person, is one who can be spoken 
to — yes, this Infinite Spirit, this Maker and Lord of all 
things can be spoken to by you and me, for He is our 
Father ; and in teaching us to open our petitions with this 
endearing name, Christ taught us to come to God through 
no intervening agency, but making as it were our con- 
sciousness directly audible to His. 

Moreover, the name by which we address God in prayer 
implies that He has personal relations to our interests, and 
is personally interested in whatever affects our welfare. 
" The Father " concerns Himself personally, directly, con- 
stantly, in and for the happiness of His children. The 
name signifies a mutual relationship, an endearing sympa- 
thy ; it warrants us in appropriating to ourselves the divine 
personality by a filial affection that identifies this with our 
very life : " When thou hast entered into thy closet, and 
hast shut to the door" — shutting out the while even the 
nearest of earthly friends — then canst thou, for the moment 
as it were, have God unto thyself, and " pray to thy Father 
who seeth in secret." 

Still further, the name by which Jesus taught us to ad- 
dress God in prayer is a name that pledges to us His pres- 
ence and His love. The instinct of prayer was not given 
to mock us with vain aspirations and unsatisfied longings ; 
neither has God required us to pray simply in acknow- 
ledgment of our own dependence, and of His power and 
majesty. He is our Father ; and the one Father who loves 
us with a love that is always wise, pure, unselfish, perfect. 
" What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, 
will he give him a stone ? or if he ask a fish, will he give 



PRAYER FOR TEMPORAL THINGS. 123 

him a serpent? If ye, then, being evil, know how to give 
good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your 
Father which is in heaven give good things to them that 
ask Him." x The conception that underlies all true prayer 
is that of a direct address to God as a Father. 

The teaching and example of Christ authorize us to in- 
clude in the subject matter of prayer, our physical necessities 
and our temporal interests in general. Some would restrict 
prayer to themes and objects purely spiritual — thinking 
thus to avoid the speculative difficulties of the Christian 
doctrine of Providence, and yet keep up a living connec- 
tion between God and the human soul. But the essential 
difficulty in expounding Providence is not got rid of by 
transferring it from the sphere of matter to that of mind, 
since the mind also has laws of its own. Many of the 
phenomena of thought, memory, association, feeling, can 
be reduced to that observed regularity of sequence which 
indicates a law of action or manifestation, and it is no easier 
to conceive or explain how a distinct personal Power could 
move harmoniously amid the laws of such a sphere than 
amid the laws of matter. Indeed, seeing that mind pos- 
sesses the faculty of free will, and therefore can oppose it- 
self to the will of God, it may even be more difficult to 
give a philosophy of divine action within the sphere of 
mind than in that of matter. 

The validity of prayer is given in the argument hereto- 
fore adduced for a personal Providence. That argument 
rests substantially upon the same grounds with the argu- 
ment for a personal God — the apparent ordering or purpos- 
ing of events with reference to foreseen ends ; the combina- 
tion of different and even opposite laws or phenomena so as 
to produce some special and beneficial result ; the manifold 
adaptations of things to persons and of persons to things — 
all this, wherever discerned, gives intuitively the convic- 

1 Matt. vii. 9, 12. 



lzJ4 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

tion of a planning and over-ruling mind ; and that con- 
viction utters itself in the spontaneousness of prayer for 
what lies beyond the compass of our own will. A French 
philosopher at dinner with tne keen-witted Sidney Smith 
declaimed against the notion of Providence as contrary to 
the laws of things. The beautiful workings of cause and 
effect in Nature he used to illustrate the glory of Science, 
while denying the existence of God. Changing the subject 
Smith observed : " How skilfully this pastry has been pre- 
pared. " "Admirable," rejoined the philosopher, "it 
could not have been better made in France." "Well, 
then, " said Smith, " from the skill shown in compounding 
this dish to our taste, we must infer the non-existence of 
the cook" 

The logic that denies a Providence in a world so full of 
the wise and careful adaptation of means to ends, must 
land at last in this absurdity. The mind intuitively as- 
serts an intelligent cause wherever it perceives such adapta- 
tion. And the universality and particularity of Provi- 
dence in the affairs of life was used by Christ as the argu- 
ment for making our temporal concerns the subject-mat- 
ter of prayer. The petition " Give us this day our daily 
bread," is not to be reserved for some extremity when one 
is in danger of starving, but is a daily prayer for God's 
blessing upon our industry, for the means of temporal sup- 
port ; and while we thus look to God for daily food, we 
are encouraged not to suffer temporalities to become too 
engrossing, since our Heavenly Father knows what we 
have need of, and Himself will care for us. 

Christ taught that prayer has a positive influence with 
God. With some truly devout persons it is a notion that 
" God's end in requiring prayer is solely that it may be a 
means to work in the petitioner a suitable frame of mind;" 
that its influence is wholly subjective ; that the feelings of 
veneration, dependence, humility, gratitude, trust, which it 



PRAYER NOT MERELY SUBJECTIVE. Vlt 

calls into exercise are the substantial benefits of prayer, 
its real efficacy ; while its true answer is found in the 
frame of submission and peace that it induces in the sup- 
pliant. A familiar illustration of this view likens prayer 
to a a man in a small boat laying hold of a large ship : 
who, if he does not move the large vessel, at least moves 
the small vessel towards the large one." 

That the frames and feelings proper to prayer form no 
small part of its beneficial influence, and contribute much 
to the spiritual growth of one who rightly cultivates them, 
all must agree. But could one cultivate these, would it be 
possible to cherish such frames and feelings for any length 
of time, if he regarded prayer simply as a kind of spiritual 
gymnastics to be practised upon himself for the sake of 
these effects ? Suppose him to say, ' I cannot see how there 
can be a Providence, for every thing moves on by fixed 
laws : I do not imagine that prayer has any influence upon 
God, that my asking for a thing has any connection what- 
ever with my receiving it; indeed, I believe that every 
thing comes to me or befalls me in the regular course of 
nature ; nevertheless, I will pray for the sake of cultivating 
the feelings of dependence and gratitude, and of improving 
my own spiritual state ;' — how long would one holding such 
a philosophy be likely to keep up his unmeaning and ino- 
perative petitions for the sake of their reflex influence upon 
himself? or how long could he cherish a lively interest in 
that which at heart he did not believe in? Those spiritual 
frames which are most important to the soul's culture, are 
best developed through faith in the efficacy of prayer as a 
direct address to our Father in heaven ; and Christ con- 
stantly declared the prevailing influence of prayer with 
God Himself as the incentive to its exercise. " Ash and it 
shall be given you;" — the asking precedes and influences 
the giving — "seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall 
be opened unto you : for every one that asketh, receiveth : 



126 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

and he that seeketh, findeth : and to him that knoeketh, 
it shall be opened." 1 

The effect of united, consentaneous prayer to secure some 
specific object of faith, in the sphere of spiritual influences, 
is set forth in the declaration, " If two of you shall agree 
on earth, as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall 
be done for them of my Father which is in heaven." 2 
After Jesus had confounded His disciples by His power in 
withering the barren fig tree, He made this an argument 
with them for faith in prayer: "Have faith in God — for 
verily I say unto you, that whosoever shall say unto this 
mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, 
and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that 
those things which he saith shall come to pass, he shall 
have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, 
What things soever ye desire when ye pray., believe that 
ye receive them, and ye shall have them." 3 Though thip 
may not be construed as a literal promise of power to work 
miracles, yet under the figure of removing a mountain, it 
sets forth this substantial truth — that earnest, believing 
prayer is directly efficacious with God for removing great 
difficulties and achieving great works in connection with 
His cause. 

Luke records the parable of the unjust judge, to show 
that " men ought ahvays to pray, and not to faint" 4 — that 
favors are granted to persistent importunity which might 
be withheld from a weaker petition ; and the same thing is 
taught by the parable of the man who went to his friend 
at midnight, and importuned him for bread. 5 Where 
there is a Will to be influenced, a Heart to be affected by 
entreaty, one can understand how perseverance in prayer 
may be an element of success ; but of what use were im- 
portunity in a world from which the personal superinten- 

l Mat. vii. 7. 2 Mat. xviii. 19. 3 Mark xi. 22, 25. 

* Luke xviii. 1-9. 6 Luke xi. 5-9. 



GOD ENGAGES TO ANSWER PRAYER. 127 

dence of God had been ruled out by inexorable laws ? 
Our reiterated crying would avail no more than that of 
the priests of Baal, when they cried all day long " O Baal, 
hear us,*' and cut themselves with knives in the frenzy of 
their importunity. A thousand cries could not move Laws 
to sympathy ; Fate cannot be melted by importunity ; but 
belief in the personal care of God over the world warrants 
persistency in prayer. 

The assurance that God is influenced by prayer is 
rendered more personal and practical through the relations 
of Christ to the Father on the one hand and to the dis- 
ciples on the other. With a view to comfort His disciples 
upon the eve of His departure, He said, " Whatsoever ye 
shall ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may 
be glorified in the Son." l " If ye abide in Me, and My 
words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall 
be done unto you :" 2 — and again, " Whatsoever ye shall 
ask the Father in My name He will give it you." 3 Here 
the efficacy of prayer is grounded in the argument of love. 
And all the instructions and promises concerning prayer 
given by Christ rest the motive and encouragement to 
pray, not in its effect upon our own hearts, but in its posi- 
tive influence with God to procure the object of our hearts' 
desire. It is what our heavenly Father engages to do that 
is held up to our faith in asking. 

If it be asked, How can God be influenced by our 
prayer ? — it is a sufficient answer, that He says He is so 
influenced. And if it be asked again, How can God an- 
swer a particular prayer in a world of general laws ? it is 
a sufficient reply that He is God. Such questions lead to 
an enticing field of speculation ; but whatever theory we 
may invent to explain the manner in which God may an- 
swer prayer in harmony with the laws of matter and of 
mind, Ave should remember that this is purely a specula- 

1 John xiv. 13. 'John xv. 7. s John xvi. 23. 



128 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

tion, and not to be put forth as a fact, either discovered or 
revealed. 

Since the Bible does not teach that prayer is commonly 
answered by miracle, we are not at liberty to introduce the 
miraculous to support our theory of prayer. But it is a 
prerogative of Spirit to direct, adapt, and combine the 
properties and laws of Matter for its own ends. And 
since this is done even under the limitations of the human 
spirit, much more must God — a Spirit of unlimited know- 
ledge, wisdom and power — be able to bring His will to 
bear upon the laws and conditions of Matter and Mind so 
as to direct and develop what He desires to bring to pass, 
without impairing that orderly constitution of things which 
He has established. 

Professor Tyndall has said, " The ideas of prayer and of 
a change in the course of natural phenomena refuse to be 
connected in thought ;" but this is only when thought nar- 
rows itself and narrows all the powers of the universe to 
the groove of physical uniformity ; when thought denies 
the spirituality of its own parentage, and its affinity with a 
world of spiritual intelligences. The separate properties 
of nitrogen and oxygen were fixed unchangeably from the 
moment of their creation ; nor could it have been possible 
to conceive beforehand how these two alien inorganic sub- 
stances could be made to support the life of organized 
beings; but now that so great a marvel has been ac- 
complished by intelligent adaptation, it is conceivable that 
He who has combined the deadly nitrogen and the con- 
suming oxygen so as to produce the life-giving atmosphere, 
can also combine, direct, or control laws, properties, 
tendencies of diverse and seemingly contrary natures, so as 
to bring forth new results of beneficence. He is at home 
in the laboratory of Nature, and equally at home in the 
processes of Mind. 

Moreover, it is a groundless assumption that the course 



LAWS PROVE AN INTELLIGENCE. 129 

of tilings must be changed in order that prayer may be 
answered. No science can claim that all phenomena are 
included within its categories ; above the laws of phenomena 
that we do see may be other and more subtile laws beyond 
our ken ; and in the working of those higher spiritual laws, 
prayer may enter within the plane of physical phenomena 
like an eccentric chuck, which shifts the centre without 
impeding the motion or changing its general direction or 
area. 

Illustrations of spiritual powers and operations derived 
from mechanical instruments, are necessarily coarse and 
imperfect ; yet even these may serve to render abstruse sub- 
jects more intelligible. Connected with the spinning-jenny 
is an alarm-bell that rings a moment before the receiving 
spool is filled with the twist, signaling to the operator at 
the opposite side of the machine to come and set an empty 
spool in the order of succession; the next moment the 
machinery itself cuts the thread, drops the full spool into a 
basket, drops the new spool into its place, and begins to 
wind as before. By this contrivance the attendance of one 
hand is dispensed with, but the contrivance which lifts the 
mechanism one grade nearer to the plane of intelligence, 
does not thereby merge itself into the mechanism, nor dis- 
pense with its own superintendence and its power of occa- 
sional intervention. That signal-bell answers to prayer, 
invoking the great Architect of Nature to adapt His own 
laws and combinations to some impending necessity. 

God, in His forethought of events, may have assigned 
to prayer the place of a condition precedent to particular 
results, so that this also enters into some law of phenomena 
higher than our sciences can reach. Or there may even be 
in believing prayer, some subtile power of causation over 
events themselves ; the true odic, or odyllic force, may be 
centered here. But all theorizing upon the subject must 



130 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

end at last in this bare statement ; that God has declared 
that He is, and will be, influenced by the prayer of faith. 
But though Jesus taught that prayer is influential, as a 
direct appeal to our Father in heaven, He also announced 
certain conditions upon which prayer, to be efficacious, must 
proceed. These are as follows, 

a. The object prayed for must be in harmony with the 
divine Wisdom as seeing, and the divine Love as choosing 
always that which is best for the suppliant. Mere impor- 
tunity ought not to procure for us anything which upon the 
whole is not for our good. u Thy will be done " is there- 
fore the governing clause in every petition, and prayer 
should always be offered in humble submission to the will 
of God. " Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy 
sight." l "Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou 
wilt." 2 

b. Prayer must be offered in faith ; not as an experi- 
mental essay with Providence, nor for the manipulation of 
our own feelings ; but with the earnest conviction that the 
thing we pray for will be bestowed, if, on the whole, this 
is best for us, and if, under all the circumstances, this is 
wisely possible. " All things, whatsoever ye shall ask in 
prayer, believing, ye shall receive." 3 

c. In order to successful prayer the tone of our desires 
should be supremely spiritual. In praying for temporal 
benefits we should have in view chiefly the spiritual benefit 
to be attained through freedom from earthly anxieties. 
" Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; 
and all these things shall be added unto you." 4 

d. Christ taught us to pray in His name. That name 
at once expresses the love of God to man, and denotes the 
nearness of our humanity to God. " Whatsoever ye 
shall ask the Father in My name, He will give it you." 5 

* Matt. xi. 26. * Matt. xxvi. 39, * Matt. xxi. 22. 

* Matt. vl. 33L * John xvi. 23L 



PRAYER RULES THE WORLD. 131 

The influence that Christ has ascribed to prayer exalts 
man to the dignity of a spiritual Power. Materialism 
would degrade man to a slave of physical laws ; atheism 
would make him the creature of accidents and circum- 
stances ; but Christianity enthrones man as a co-worker 
with God in the realm of spiritual agencies. Man's feeling 
of dependence upon God is the avenue to his power with 
God. This lifts him into the line of those Providential 
forces that rule the world. Thus it is that "the kingdom 
and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the 
whole heaven, are given to the people of the saints of the 
Most High." 1 

Am I truly a man of prayer ? of earnest, believing 
prayer ? Then am I more the ruler of the world than 
Alexander or Napoleon. Then nothing shall stand before 
my power. Do the wicked heap up oppression, and frame 
iniquity by a law ? I go into my closet and cry, " Arise, 
O Lord, " and presently the earth shakes, the heavens 
smoke, and Slavery goes down in a sea of fire and blood. 
It is I who have overthrown it, working up yonder above 
the clouds, where God meets my prayers. They who sit 
in Paris, in London, in Berlin, holding royal or diplomat- 
ic conferences to settle the future of Europe and the East, 
they who devise wars of dynasty, of ambition and conquest, 
must take the man of prayer into their counsels ; for if 
they plot iniquity, he will go up into the King's chamber 
and overthrow it : he will reach forth his hands and 
touch the springs that are behind their armies and be- 
neath their thrones. When the church shall fully use her 
prerogative of prayer the kingdom of God will come in 
the demonstration of the Spirit and of power. 

By the virtue that is lodged in the prayer of faith, who- 
soever will may approximate himself to God in character. 
" This is the will of God, even your sanctification ; " and 

1 Daniel -ii. 27. 



132 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

he who would be holy knows assuredly that, in every pe- 
tition for a pure heart, he prays for that which God would 
have him above all things to possess. Such a longing 
opens the heart to the life-forces of the divine Spirit, and 
moves the soul upward toward God; yea, let one but utter 
that first lisping cry " God be merciful to me a sinner/' and 
no mountains can shut in that cry, no clouds weigh it down, 
no laws restrain it : — that yearning of the soul after God 
shall bring God to the soul as its Father, its Saviour, its 
Comforter. " Lord, teach us how to pray. " 



CHAPTEK XL 



No teacher ever set forth himself so constantly, so promi- 
nently, so imperatively as did Jesus Christ. It is offensive 
to taste, and savors of vanity or presumption, when a 
teacher continually claims the merit of originality or of 
discovery, and exacts of his disciples homage to his person, 
his wisdom, or his opinions. Yet with Christ, "I say 
unto you/' was the preface to every discourse, sometimes 
to almost every sentence; " believe Me," " receive Me," the 
demand made upon the hearer not only as a test of dis~ 
cipleship, but as the evidence of love for truth and for God, 
and the necessary condition of eternal life. He summed 
up His whole teaching in that memorable saying, "I 
am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life :" 1 — not I 
show the way, but I Myself am the way ; not I teach the 
Truth, but I am Myself the truth ; not I give or promise 
life, or will lead My followers unto life, but I am the life : — 
and though God requires all men to come unto Him, and 
is seeking and calling them by all the methods of His 
providence and His grace, "no man cometh unto the 
Father, but by Me." 

But the marvel of His character is, that with all this 
preaching of Himself, this constant repeating of I and Me, 
there is in the sayings of Jesus no tone of egotism, no air 
of presumption, no trace of that form of self-assertion which 
suggests pride or vanity in the speaker, or offends the 
taste or judgment of the hearer. As a psychological phe- 

1 John xiv. 6. 

132 



134 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

nomenon this calls for explanation. Why is it that we not 
only tolerate from the lips of Jesus, but receive with rever- 
ence, assertions and demands concerning Himself that in 
any other would be an offensive arrogance ? 

This is not simply because of the force and moment of 
the truth He utters ; for though one who announces a new 
and important truth is entitled to have his name stand in 
honorable association with that truth, yet we could not 
endure that he should be always setting himself before the 
truth and demanding that it should be received in hi;? 
name. Had Newton insisted upon the perpetual recogni- 
tion of himself as the discoverer of the law of gravitation, 
his vanity would have detracted from his fame. Truth is 
greater than any man. Yet Jesus said " / am the Truth," 
and men are not staggered by even so bold a form of self- 
assertion. 

Mr. Liddon, in his Bampton lectures, has grouped to- 
gether in a striking manner these personal assertions and 
claims of Jesus in His teachings. " He distinctly, repeated- 
ly, energetically preaches Himself. He is the Bread of 
life. He is the living Bread that came down from heaven : 
believers in Him will feed on Him and will have eternal 
life. He points to a living water of the Spirit, which He 
can give, and which will quench the thirst of souls that 
drink it. All who came before Him He characterizes as 
having been by comparison with Himself, the thieves and 
robbers of mankind. He is Himself the one Good Shep- 
herd of the souls of men. He knows and He is known of 
His true sheep. Not only is He the Shepherd, He is the 
very door of the sheepfold. To enter through Him is to 
be safe. He is the Vine, the Life-tree of regenerate hu- 
manity. All that is truly fruitful and lovely in the human 
family must branch forth from Him ; all spiritual life 
must wither and die if it be severed from His. He stands 
consciously between earth and heaven. He claims to be 



Christ's personal demands. 135 

the One Means of a real approach to the invisible God : 
no soul of man can come to the Father but through Him, 
He promises that all prayers offered in His name shall be 
answered ; if ye ask anything in my name, /will do it. . 
He claims to be the Lord of the realm of death ; He will 
Himself awake the sleeping dead 5 all that are in their 
graves shall hear His voice* He will raise Himself from 
the dead* He proclaims, 1 1 am the Resurrection and the 
Life.' He encourages men to trust in Him as they trust 
in God : to make Him an object of faith just as they be- 
lieve in God ; to honor Him as they honor the Father. 
To love Him is a necessary mark of the children of God ; 
if God were your Father, ye would have loved Me. It is 
not possible to love God, and yet to hate Himself. He 
that hatethMe, hateth My Father also. The proof of a true 
love to Him lies in doing His bidding : if ye love Me 
keep My commandments. . . All radiates from Himself, 
all converges toward Himself. .... He commands, He 
does not invite discipleship. . . . His message is to be re- 
ceived upon pain of eternal loss, and in receiving it men 
are to give themselves up to Him simply and unreservedly. 
No rival claim, however strong, no natural affection, how- 
ever legitimate and sacred, may interpose between Him- 
self and the soul of His follower. He that loveth father 
or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. How can 
Christ thus bid men live for Himself as for the very end 
of their existence ? How can He rightly draw toward 
Himself the whole thought and love even of one single 
human being, with this imperious urgency, if He be any- 
thing else or less than the Supreme Lcrd of life. " l 

This manner of Christ, is an index to His doctrine con- 
cerning Himself. If He had nothing back of a human 
consciousness upon which to base such assertions, was He 

1 This same thought is admirably presented by Rev. T. Binney, of London, 
in his " Sermons of Forty Years. " 



136 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

not more visionary than wise ? So far from being the way 
and the truth, was He not either misled or misleading? 
Underlying His whole teaching there is a claim of per- 
sonal supremacy, of absolute authority, of perfection in 
knowledge and truth, of lordship over the soul, of dominion 
over life and death — a tone of self-assertion in respect to 
things upon which no man has a right to be confident of 
his own wisdom and power, which can not be reconciled 
with modesty, with truth, or with soundness of judgment, 
if He who thus proclaimed Himself the Way, the Truth 
and the Life, was simply a wiser and better sort of man 
than His fellows. Separated from Himself His words lose 
their meaning. The subject of His preaching was Himself 
to such a degree that neither doctrine nor life remains in 
His words apart from His own personality. But the 
words of Jesus are pervaded with the consciousness of His 
divine Sonship which gives Him right to speak with abso- 
lute confidence and authority. 

This doctrine, however, is not a mere inference from the 
manner in which Christ summoned the people to trust in 
Himself. He distinctly taught that He was the Son of 
God. the representative of the Father upon earth, His 
associate and equal in heaven. He allowed Himself to be 
addressed by this title without objection or qualification of 
any kind. At the opening of His ministry, when Jesus 
was calling disciples one by one, Nathanael, struck with 
His knowledge of the heart, exclaimed, " Rabbi, Thou art 
the Son of God," l In the hearing of the rest, Jesus suf- 
fered this title to pass unchallenged, and not only so, but 
He assured Nathanael, who had confessed this faith from 
his own inward conviction, that he should hereafter behold 
the outward visible confirmation of it, in the heavens 
opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending 
Upon Him who there stood in the garb of the Son of Man. 

1 John i. 49. 



CHRIST REVEALED HIMSELF GRADUALLY. 137 

Thus the seeming contrast of the two titles, " Son of 
God " and " Son of Man," points to the real unity of their 
subject — the true Humanity and the divine Sonship being 
offset in terms or titles only, as two diverse aspects of the 
same person. Jesus did not disclaim the title, " Son of 
God " which Nathanael gave, and employ the phrase " Son 
of Man " as a substitute for that ; on the contrary, He ac- 
cepted this, and virtually approved it, as a declaration of 
faith from His new disciple : " Because I said unto thee, I 
saw thee under the fig tree, belie vest thou?" This mirac- 
ulous vision, with the attendant knowledge of his heart 
and life on the part of an utter stranger, had impressed 
Nathanael with the conviction that this new prophet was 
the Son of God. Nathanael may have had only the vague 
Jewish notion touching the Messiah as the Son of God ; 
yet his acknowledgment being based upon the supernatural 
knowledge that Jesus had shown, pointed to something 
deeper than an official title ; and the answer was, " Thou 
shalt see greater things than these " — shalt even have the 
witness of angels from heaven that I am He. 

It was not, however, the plan of Jesus to proclaim His 
divinity openly at the first. He sought to put Himself 
into thorough sympathy with mankind and to draw them 
into confidential relations through His own hearty human- 
ity ; and He desired also to test the sincerity of men in 
spiritual things by opening His divinity to the discovery 
of their faith. He did not first approach them upon the 
side of wonder and awe by declaring His Godhead, nor by 
manifesting it through marvels addressed to the senses; 
but upon the side of love and compassion, through the 
lowliness and tenderness of a common humanity, from 
which by degrees He lifted them up to discern in His 
own works and words the tokens of His divine Sonship/ 

A mode of revealing Himself so wisely adapted for test- 
ing His true character and also for educating the faith of 



138 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

His followers, led Jesus at the first to speak of Himself as 
the " Son of Man " instead of openly proclaiming Himself 
the "Son of God." But if the latter title were not His 
by the same right as the former, how can we reconcile His 
accepting this from others, with the modesty of using the 
inferior title, and with the honesty that marks His whole 
speech and life ? He permitted Himself to be called the 
" Son of God " well knowing that this was intended to be 
an ascription of divinity, and under circumstances that 
were equivalent to His proclaiming His divinity. It is 
not claimed that the appellation " Son of God " is itself 
decisive of the divinity of Christ — for this was a Jewish 
title of the Messiah, the Anointed ; but it was given to 
Jesus and accepted by Him as a token of Divinity. The 
question is purely one of exegesis, to be determined by a 
careful annotation of the passages in which the title occurs. 
It is applied to Jesus twenty-five times in the four Gospels, 
several of these, however, being but repetitions of the same 
cases or incidents. 

a. Jesus was accosted as " the Son of God " by Satan 
and by other inferior demons. l Perhaps in these cases the 
conception of the Messiah as the King of the Jews, 
anointed of God as His vicegerent in the world, will ex- 
haust the meaning. In Luke iv. 41, for instance, the 
name Christ is given as the equivalent of this epithet; 
" Devils came out of many, crying out, and saying, Thou 
art Christ, the Son of God. And He rebuking them, suf- 
fered them not to speak: for they knew that He was 
Christ." But on the other hand, the exclamation of the 
demons in the country of the Gergesenes, " Art thou come 
hither to torment us before the time ?" seems to imply a 
recognition of His divine power and authority. They ap- 
prehended banishment from earth to hell, from opportuni- 
ties of mischief to the unmitigated endurance of punish- 

i Matt. iv. 3, 6 ; viii. 29 ; Mark iii. 11 ; v. 7 ; Luke iv. 3, 9, 41 ; viii. 28. 



MEANING OF " SON OF GOD." 139 

ment, before the final judgment; and they ascribed to Jesus 
the power so to order their destiny. 

b. In a few instances this title was used by the enemies 
of Jesus, by way of taunt or sneer; — as for instance when 
passers by reviled Him as He hung upon the cross, wag- 
ging their heads, and saying, " If Thou be the Son of God, 
come down from the cross." 1 The full force of such a 
taunt, and the miraculous power of self-preservation which 
the challenge implied, would seem to attach the notion of 
divinity to the epithet " Son of God." 

c. The same interpretation must be put upon the excla- 
mation of the centurion and his brother soldiers, " Truly 
this was the Son of God." 2 A Koman soldier accustomed 
to despise the Jews, could have no sympathy with their 
expectation of a Messiah, and if he had heard from the lips 
of Jews the title "Son of God," he could hardly have 
attached to it their peculiar theocratic signification. But a 
Koman of that time, and a soldier withal, would be suscep- 
tible to superstitious fears touching the gods as manifesting 
themselves in supernatural phenomena ; and when he saw 
the earthquake, the resurrection of the dead, and the other 
marvels that attended the death of Jesus, filled with awe 
of these miraculous signs, he cried out, " Truly this was the 
Son of God." That title had j ust fallen upon his ears in 
the taunts of passers by ; he takes it up with the emphasis 
of truth, and gives it not their meaning but his own; and 
from his point of view it would signify a divine person. 

d. The High Priest used this title in the Messianic sense 
when he said to Jesus, " I adjure Thee by the living God, 
that Thou tell us whether Thou be the Christ, the Son of 
God." 3 This was a title of honor based upon the usage 
of the Old Testament touching the ideal theocratic king 
as the anointed Son of God. Thus the Lord promised to 
David concerning Solomon, " I will be his Father and he 

1 Mat. xxvii. 40, 43. 2 Mat. xxvii. 54; Mark xv. 39. 8 Mat. xxvi. 6a 



140 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

shall be My son." 1 And in the second Psalm the anointed 
of the Lord is exalted above all kings and peoples : " I 
have set My King upon My holy hill of Zion. Thou art 
My Son, this day have I begotten Thee." 2 This usage of 
the Old Testament interprets the current language of the 
Jews in the time of Jesus, concerning the Christ as the 
Son of God ; — He was the ideal theocratic king. Yet even 
in the second Psalm, He is not declared a Son simply by 
virtue of His being constituted a king, but is anointed 
king because upon other grounds of divine favor He was 
already the chosen Son : — the Sonship preceded the King- 
ship. It is evident from the narrative as given with so 
much detail by John, that the blind man to whom Jesus 
gave sight had only the current Jewish conception of the 
Son of God as the Christ. 3 

e. We come now to the use of this title by the disciples 
of Jesus, as an index to their conception of His character. 
Though Nathanael may have used the titles " Son of God " 
and "King of Israel" as equivalent, John the Baptist at- 
tached to the former a deeper meaning, when he saw and 
bare record that "this is the Son of God." 4 John ac- 
knowledged the pre-existence of Jesus as the warrant of 
His pre-eminence ; "He that cometh after Me, is preferred 
before Me; for He wets before Me;" 5 and as "the only 
begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He de- 
clared God, whom no man at any time hath seen." 6 The 
title " Son of God, " based upon this recognition of His 
origin and functions, denotes something higher than an 
honorary distinction of office — some relation to God Him- 
self that was peculiar and pre-eminent. The deep signifi- 
cance of this relation appears in that tender reference to the 
" only-begotten " which closes the discourse with Nicode- 
mus ; — " For God so loved the world that He gave His 

1 2 Saml. vii. 14. * Ps . ii# 6> 7. 3 John ix . 35j 36 . 
* John i. 34. 5 John i. 15. 6 John i. 18. 



JESUS CLAIMED DIVINE POWERS. 141 

only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him, should 
not perish but have everlasting life." 1 

The disciples on board the ship in the tempestuous night, 
when they saw Jesus walking on the sea ; 2 Martha in her 
confidence that Jesus might have saved her brother, and 
her wondering hope of his resurrection; 3 Peter asserting 
the constancy of the twelve after the multitude of disciples 
had turned back; 4 — these all rested their confession of 
Jesus as "the Son of God" upon some token of divinity 
that gleamed through His words or acts ; — the winds and 
the waves obeyed Him, He had power over diseases and 
death, He had the words of eternal life. Thus the disci- 
ples, Jews though they were, and imbued with the Jewish 
doctrine of the Messiah, appear to have attached to the 
name "Son of God" a meaning higher than any official 
title would convey. 

/. It only remains that we consider the cases in which 
Jesus spoke of Himself as the Son of God, and of His one- 
ness with the Father. There were undoubted instances in 
which He used this name not as designating His official 
calling, but as expressing an unparalleled personal relation 
with God. 5 "Verily, verily, I say unto you the hour is 
coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice 
of the Son of God ; and they that hear shall live. For 
as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to 
the Son to have life in Himself." 6 Jesus here claimed for 
Himself the most essential property of divinity — life in 
self-possession and the power and prerogative of impart- 
ing life to others. This power He put forth in raising 
Lazarus from the grave, when He purposely kept aloof 
until Lazarus was dead, saying, "This sickness is not 
unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of 
God might be glorified thereby." 7 Here He associated 

1 John iii. 16. 2 Matt. x iv. 33. 3 John xi. 27. * John vi. 69. 
•Matt. xxi. 37. 6 John v. 25, 26. » John xi. 4. 



142 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

Himself with the Father in the glory that would ensue 
from a miracle evidencing the highest property of divinity 
to be vested in Himself. 

In the parable of the wicked husbandmen He separated 
Himself from all the servants of God who had been sent 
before, as the son and heir, who, because of this immediate 
relationship to the householder, was deserving of a peculiar 
reverence. 1 Again, in speaking of His second Advent, He 
contrasted the Son of God with both men and angels: "Of 
that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels 
which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." 2 
Whoever the Son was, He was distinct from men, and 
above the angels ; for He was clearly and absotutely con- 
trasted with both, not here in respect of knowledge, but in 
degree as a being. The gradation is, " no man" no " an- 
gel" not even the Son. Who then was He ? 

The Jews of that time understood Jesus to claim equali- 
ty with God by His manner of speaking of His Father. 
After He had healed the impotent man at the pool of 
Bethesda, the Jews sought to slay Him, because He had 
done these things on the Sabbath-day. Jesus answered 
them " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." God 
Himself, who has proclaimed the Sabbath as a hallowed 
rest, though He has ceased from His work of creation, con- 
tinues, nevertheless, His work of beneficence, in caring for 
the world ; and I do as my Father does. Now if Jesus 
were only man, this same argument would have exonerated 
every pious Jew from keeping the Sabbath according to 
the law of Moses ; but as, on another occasion, He declared 
that " the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath-day," 3 
so here He associated Himself with God in the right and 
reason of His action, and rested His authority to "work" 
upon the Sabbath-day on His prerogative as the Son of 
God. His accusers resented this as a claim of divinity, 

1 Matt. xxi. 37. 2 Mark xiii. 32. 3 Matt. xii. 8. 



143 

and "they sought the more to kill Him, because He not 
only had broken the Sabbath, but said also that God -was 
His Father, making Himself equal with God." l 

Though in common speech they may have used the title 
Son of God to designate the Messiah in His official charac- 
ter, yet they understood Jesus to use it as denoting sonship 
in essence and in dignity — equality with God in being and 
in power. If in this charge His accusers were perverting 
His meaning, Jesus had every reason, personal and public, 
for correcting the misunderstanding. His life was in dan- 
ger, and He could have pacified His enemies by denying 
their construction of His words : He desired a hearing for 
His message, and this He might have hoped for by allay- 
ing such a blind and passionate prejudice. But instead of 
rejecting their interpretation of His words and disclaiming 
the thought of equality with God, He went on to say that 
as the Son of God His thoughts and actions were identical 
with those of the Father ; that He possessed the power of 
the Father, even to raising the dead and judging the 
world; that even as the Father, He had life in Himself; 
and He summed up the discourse with the demand " that 
all men should honor the Son even as they honor the 
Father." The logic of this whole argument depends upon 
the fact that Jesus admitted and justified the claim of 
equality with God which the Jews had attached to His 
words. 

For a man to put forth such a pretension was blas- 
phemy ; and the Jews more than once accused Jesus of this 
crime, and sought to stone Him to death. On one occa- 
sion, at the feast of the dedication, the Jews said to Him, 
" If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly." To this H« an- 
swered, " The works I do in my Father's name, they bear 
witness of Me." 2 In so far as the title " Son of God " 
was an equivalent for " the Christ," this answer could not 

1 John v. 18. * John x. 24, 25. 






144 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

have exposed Him to the charge of blasphemy. That the 
Christ should speak of God as the Father whom He repre- 
sented in His official character, and should appeal to works 
done in the Father's name, was legitimate, and in accord- 
ance with the Jewish notion of the Messiah. But Jesus 
went farther than this, and having declared His own abso- 
lute power over His sheep, even to the giving them eternal 
life, He rose to the sublime assertion, " I and my Father 
are One." * At this the Jews took up stones to stone Him 
for blasphemy, " because/' said they, " that Thou being a 
man, makest Thyself God." The gravamen of the offense 
was that " being a man " He made Himself God, by assert- 
ing that He and Plis Father were one; but there would 
have been no blasphemy in claiming a moral unity with 
the Father through His representative character and com- 
mission as the Christ. 

Jesus might have refuted the charge of blasphemy in 
either of two ways : — by showing that His words did not 
admit of the construction that His accusers had put upon 
them ; or by declaring that He was truly divine, and there- 
fore not guilty of blasphemy in making Himself God. He 
did not seek to parry their construction, but proceeded to 
justify His words by an argument from the less to the 
greater. Reminding them that in their Scriptures judges 
were called " gods " as the organs of the divine word and 
will, He claimed that He could literally appropriate the 
title " Son of God " in its full meaning, because the Father 
had sanctified Him and sent Him into the world. Then 
once more appealing to His works, He reiterated the asser- 
tion of oneness with God — " the Father in Me, and I in 
Him." So far were the Jews from being convinced or 
pacified by His answer, that they sought again to take Him, 
that they might visit upon Him the punishment of blas- 
phemy. 

The charge of blasphemy became a conclusive proof that 

1 John x. 22 seq. 



CHRIST ONE IN ESSENCE WITH GOD. 145 

He meant to assert His own divinity, when, at His trial, 
He not only suffered this charge to be revived without 
contradicting or explaining it, but re-affirmed His Sonship 
under that construction of His meaning. When Pilate 
declared that he found Jesus guilty of no offense against 
Roman law, the Jews cried out, " We have a law, and by 
our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the 
Son of God." L The law referred to was that against blas- 
phemy. 2 A claim to be the Christ would not have been 
blasphemy, but only imposture or enthusiasm ; to have 
rendered it blasphemous to assume the title " Son of God," 
that title must have signified divinity itself. But Jesus 
declined to vindicate Himself from this charge. Now 
there was no humility in remaining quiet under so horrible 
an accusation, when by a word He could have denied the 
intention of blasphemy in His use of the phrase Son of 
God ; yet, when He stood before the Sanhedrim, the High 
Priest adjured Him by the living God to answer whether 
He was the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus not only an- 
swered affirmatively, " Thou hast said," but went on to 
proclaim His " coming in the clouds of heaven, sitting on 
the right hand of power." 3 Thereupon the High Priest 
rent his clothes, saying, " He hath spoken blasphemy," and 
for blasphemy they found Him " guilty of death." 

Clearly the title Son of God was understood to denote 
participation in the divine nature, and equality of essence 
with God ; and Jesus, knowing that this title was so under- 
stood, consented to receive it, and used it of Himself; and 
when charged with blasphemy for making Himself equal 
with God, He did not deny that He claimed equality with 
God, but did deny that this was blasphemy or presumption, 
and insisted that He and His Father were one. Either 
then He had within Him the consciousness of divinity, or 
He was a demented enthusiast. 

1 John xix. 7. 2 Lev. xxiv. 16. » Matt. xxvi. 63-ftft. 

10 



146 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

This oneness with the Father which Jesus constantly 
affirmed as the testimony of His own consciousness, was 
not merely a moral unity — oneness in spirit and feeling, 
or unity of action, for the same object, upon the same 
plan — but a oneness that made it impossible for Him to 
act as in any way separate from God. " The Son can do 
nothing of Himself." * This, says Bangel, 2 " is a feature 
of glory, not of imperfection ; such declarations proceeded 
from His intimate sense of unity, by nature and by love, 
with the Father." The Son can do nothing of Himself, 
not because He is wanting in power, or inferior and de- 
pendent in His nature, but because His Being is insepar- 
able from that of the Father. The " can do nothing" is a 
moral inability based in the will of the Son. 3 Whatever 
the Father does, that the Son does, with the same power 
and the same intent. His sheep shall never perish, for 
none shall pluck them out of His hand, — no more than 
they would be able to pluck them out of His Father's hand. 
Having thus asserted His own omnipotence, in the same 
terms in which He declared the omnipotence of the Father, 
He added " I and my Father are one :" — one, not merely 
in agreement of will, but in unity of power, and so of 
nature ; for omnipotence is an attribute of the nature of 
God. 4 It was for this that the Jews said " Thou mahest 
thyself God!" The Father is in the Son; the Father 
worketh in the Son ; and this with a unity so perfect and 
continuous that the Son who puts forth divine power in the 
view of men, is not a being extraneous to God, but in essen- 
tial nature, the source of working power, is One with God. 
His sonship was a relation to the Father that could be 
shared by no other. " No man knoweth the Son, but the 
Father; neither knoweth any man the Father save the 
Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." 5 

1 John v. 19. 3 "Hoc glorise est, non imperfectionis." Bengel, Gnomon in loo, 
3 Tholuek, in foe. * Bengel, Gnomon, John x. 30. * Mat. xi. 27. 



JESUS A DIVINE INCARNATION. 147 

" If a man love Me, My Father will love him, and we 
will come unto him, and make our abode with him." l 

In answer to Philip's desire to behold a theophany after 
the manner of the Old Testament, Jesus said, " He that 
hath seen Me hath seen the Father," 2 — " by reason of the 
consummate unity which subsists between us, just as the 
soul, in itself invisible, is seen by what it does through the 
body." 3 

The prayer of Jesus, "O Father, glorify Thou Me with 
Thine own Self, with the glory which I had with Thee be- 
fore the world was" — expresses the consciousness that Jesus 
had of Himself as an incarnation, and of His eternal pre- 
existence with the Father. He does not say, the glory 
that I received from Thee, by promise, at My coming into 
the world, but the glory which I had, ec%ov, with Thine 
own Self, in a unity of participation with the Godhead, 
before that the world was. "He always was having it, 
was in possession of it; He never began to have it." 4 In 
this utterance, surely, He made Himself God. 

The testimony of Jesus concerning Himself, though it 
nowhere gives us the doctrine of His divinity in the form 
of a philosophical concept, nevertheless makes it clear that 
the doctrine of a divine consciousness in Christ was not the 
invention of a later philosophy in the Church, but is given 
in the synoptical Gospels, as well as in the more dialectical 
Gospel of John, as it fell from the lips of Christ ; so that 
we must agree with Dorner, that " all genuine historical 
investigation presses to the result that the founder of our 
religion was Himself, through His own Self-consciousness, 
and the utterance of that to others, the cause at once of. the 
introduction into the minds of men of the Christian idea 
of the God-man, and of the attribution of that to Him." 5 

1 John xiv. 23. 2 John xiv. 9. 3 Bengel, Gnomon, John xiv. 9. 
4 Bengel, John xvii. 5. 6 Dorner, Doctrine of the Person of Christ. Intn. p. 45. 



J 48 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

The apostles did not invent this doctrine to magnify their 
Lord after His decease ; they were slow at first in coming 
to the recognition of His divinity under the veil of His 
humiliation ; though they confessed Him to be the Son of 
God, this faith was shaken for a time by His yielding 
Himself to death ; yet it came back, after His resurrection, 
and then Jesus sealed it by accepting the homage of 
Thomas, who atoned for his momentary unbelief by the 
full glowing confession " My Lord and My God." x By 
consenting to receive that declaration, Jesus warranted 
our implicit belief in the divinity of His person. 

The question here is not at all whether Thomas, by the 
elasticity of an enthusiastic nature, had vibrated from the 
extreme of skepticism to that of credulity. If Thomas 
was deluded into such a confession, what shall we say of 
Jesus, who not only did not disclaim it, but openly re- 
ceived it as His due, and pronounced those blessed who 
should come to Him with the same faith in His Sovereign- 
ty and His Divinity? Was He deluded? Or did He 
sanction a delusion ? Or was He not both Lord and God ? 

This divinity of His person gives to the words of Christ 
supreme authority over the souls of men. He is Lord of 
the conscience, Lord of the affections, Lord of the will; 
His doctrine is Truth, His command is Law, His promise 
is Life. The soul that would live must obey Christ, must 
trust Him, must serve Him. The soul that would come 
to God as the Father must come by Christ. 

The divinity of His person imparts to His sufferings 
and death a majesty and a tenderness that should draw 
men to Him in the most reverent and grateful devotion. 
That Jesus should die a witness for His principles and 
teachings, and in testimony of His love to man, was heroic, 
was pathetic, was inspiring. But when we bring into our 

i John xx. 28. 



JESUS A DIVINE INCARNATION. 149 

conception of Jesus this* divine Sonship, and consider of 
what ineffable dignity and majesty was He who thus suf- 
fered, there comes over the soul an awe and reverence 
which not all the martyrdoms of history could inspire ; 
and when we reflect that this Son of God gave Himself to 
this shame and suffering for us, is there any tie or claim 
of earth that can so move our souls to gratitude and devo- 
tion ? Consecration — the giving up all, body, soul and 
spirit to such a Saviour, — is the least to be thought of by 
one who believes upon the only-begotten Son of God. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE COMFORTER — THE HOLY GHOST. 

The Mission of Christ was begun, consecrated and ended 
by the intervention of the Holy Ghost. He was begotten 
of the Holy Ghost; 1 at His baptism the heaven was 
opened, and the Holy Ghost descended in bodily shape 
like a dove upon Him ; 2 after His resurrection, Jesus met 
with His disciples, and having identified Himself to them 
as their crucified Lord, " He breathed on them, and said 
unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost;" 3 and on the eve 
of His ascension He bade His disciples await the baptism 
of the Holy Ghost, 4 whose coming into the Church He 
had already promised as a permanent substitute for His 
own withdrawal from the world. 5 Since Jesus gave such 
prominence and significance to the Comforter in the ad- 
ministration of His kingdom upon earth, it is important 
to fix with definiteness His doctrine of the Holy Ghost, 
and the place of that doctrine in His scheme of theological 
thought. An induction of particulars upon this question 
gives the following results. 

First. Christ taught that the Holy Ghost was the Re- 
vealer of Truth from God to the souls of men. In quoting 
against the Scribes the prediction of David concerning 
Himself as the Son of God, He invested this with the 
authority of divine inspiration ; " For David himself said 
by the Holy Ghost, The Lord said to My Lord, Sit thou on 
My right hand till I make Thine enemies Thy footstool." 6 

1 Mat. i. 20; Luke i. 35. 2 Luke iii. 21, 22; Mat, iii. 13; John i. 32. 

* John xx. 22. 4 Acts i. 5, 8. 5 John xiv. 16, 26; xvi. 7. 6 Mark xii. 36. 

150 



RELATIONS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TO THE TRUTH. 151 

This prevision of the Messiah's exaltation was above the 
range of David's imagination as a poet, and was imparted 
by the Holy Ghost. Jesus constantly appealed to the 
Old Testament as " the word of God/' — thus recognizing 
in it the voice of divine inspiration. * 

He instructed His disciples to look directly to the Holy 
Ghost for the suggestion of Truth adapted to their neces- 
sities. " When they shall lead you and deliver you up, take 
no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye 
premeditate, but whatsoever shall be given you in that 
hour, that speak ye ; for it is not ye that speak but the 
Holy Ghost" 2 This was an assurance of immediate in- 
spiration, to the extent certainly of guidance in vindicating 
their faith under circumstances of difficulty, responsibility, 
and danger. This special guidance of the Holy Spirit in 
the perception and adaptation of Truth was the compensa- 
tion that Jesus promised to His disciples for the loss of 
His personal teaching. " When He, the Spirit of Truth 
is come, He will guide you into all Truth ; for He shall 
not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear [i. e. 
from the Father] that shall He speak ; and He will show 
you things to come." 3 The " Spirit of Truth " embodies 
in Himself the very principle of Truth and the knowledge 
of all Truth ; and His power is directed to bring the human 
mind into harmony with that higher sphere of spiritual 
thought and life where Truth is the bond of unity. As 
the absolute possessor of Truth, He also imparts Truth in 
its highest, purest forms ; and by both these methods, the 
ennobling and the illuminating, He would guide the apos- 
tles into all truth. 

Christ had manifested the truth from His own conscious- 
ness, and as a teacher had opened the way into the highest 
domain of knowledge ; but the spiritual meaning of mu h 
that He uttered was at first only imperfectly apprehended 

1 Luke iv. 4; John x. 35. * Mark xiii. 11. * John xvi. 13. 



152 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

by His disciples. More than once did He reprove their 
slowness of heart to believe. And indeed, the disciples 
trained in the sensuous conceptions of the Jews touching 
the Messianic kingdom, could not fully comprehend the 
sacrificial bearing of the death of Christ, until after His 
resurrection and ascension. Hence it would be the office 
of the Holy Spirit to bring this and kindred truths, as 
Jesus had Himself declared them, into vivid remembrance, 
to give them definite form, to illuminate their meaning, to 
guide the apostles to a right understanding of them, and 
also to open new reaches and applications of the Truth — 
showing "things to come." "The Comforter, which is the 
Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He 
shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your re- 
membrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. "* " When 
the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from 
the Father, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall 
testify of me." 2 "He shall glorify Me; for He shall 
receive of mine, and shall show it unto you." 3 

These several declarations set forth the Holy Spirit un- 
der every possible relation to the Truth; as revealing 
truth under new phases; as announcing prophetically 
facts to be accomplished in the kingdom of God ; as inter- 
preting truths already proclaimed by Christ; as guiding 
sincere minds into the clear and full knowledge of truth. 
But the highest function assigned to the Spirit of Truth is 
that of employing the truth as a power of sanctification 
upon the hearts of men — not a power for the intellect 
merely, but for the feelings and the will also. The prayer 
of Jesus for His disciples, " Sanctify them through Thy 
Truth; Thy word is truth," 4 would have its fulfilment 
when the Holy Spirit should guide them into all truth. 
Christ announced that the Holy Spirit would exert upon 
the minds even of sinful men a direct power of conviction 

1 John xiv. 26. 2 John xv. 26. 'John xvi. 14. *John xvii. 17. 



THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH. 153 

and rebuke through the doctrine of Christ : " When He is 
come, He will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness^ 
and of judgment : " l by making manifest the innocence 
and holiness of Christ, the sinful unbelief that had re- 
jected Him, and His assured triumph over all the powers 
of evil, and thereby working in the minds of such as had 
rejected Him, a humiliating and self-reproving conviction 
of their guilt, the Holy Spirit would vindicate the Truth 
embodied in the life and death of Jesus, and would secure 
to His Gospel a triumphant efficacy. 

That which the Holy Ghost thus effectively presents to 
the minds of men is the truths of Religion, especially as 
these are embodied in the Holy Scriptures. Christ did 
not promise that He should enlighten us in the science of 
nature, of history, of government, or make new discover- 
ies of the mysteries of creation ; — but that He should con- 
vince men of sin and lead them to faith in Christ Himself 
— a work having immediate reference to the extension of 
the Kingdom of God. 

A second point in Christ's doctrine of the Holy Spirit 
was that He was the source of the supernatural gifts and 
'powers imparted to the first disciples for the furtherance of 
the Gospel 

When Jesus commissioned the apostles to go into all the 
world and preach the Gospel to every creature, He prom- 
ised that these signs should follow them that believe: "In 
My name shall they cast out devils ; they shall speak 
with new tongues, they shall take up serpents; and if 
they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them; 
they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall re- 
cover." 2 The fulfilment of this promise is recorded by 
Luke in the following words, uttered by our Lord just be- 
fore His ascension : " Ye shall be baptized with the Holy 
Ghost not many days hence ; and ye shall receive power 
after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you" 3 — or ye shall 

1 JohnxvL8. 2 Markxvi. 17. 3 Acts i. 5, seq. 



154 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you : — 
the spiritual endowment of the apostles for their work, and 
supernatural powers to certify their calling and to con- 
vince the world of the divine warrant of the Gospel. 

Even His own miracles — though these proceeded from 
the power that dwelt always in Himself — Jesus referred to 
the Spirit of God. The Pharisees accused Him of being in 
league with Beelzebub, the prince of the devils ; but Jesus 
answered them : " If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, 
then the Kingdom of God has come unto you. " l Had 
His reply ended with these words, we might have taken 
the expression " Spirit of God" for an influence upon Him- 
self, emanating from the Father ; but He added, " All 
manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, 
but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be 
forgiven unto them. " 2 From this it is evident that Jesus 
intended by the " Spirit of God," that same " Spirit of 
Truth" of whom He afterwards spake as " the Comforter," 
for blasphemy could not be uttered against an unconscious 
influence, but only against a divine Person. 

It was, further, the doctrine of Christ that the Holy 
Spirit would abide in the hearts of believers, and with 
the Church, collectively, for guidance, comfort, encourage- 
ment, support. To prepare His disciples for His departure 
He gave them two topics of consolation : — first His own 
temporary return : — " A little while, and ye shall see me 
... I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice." 3 
But His resurrection, while it would revive their hopes of 
His kingdom, 4 and give them the most absolute confidence 
in His promises, would nevertheless be followed by a sec- 
ond and lasting bereavement of His presence, through His 
ascension to the Father. For this bereavement there 
was provided a second and permanent consolation, in the 

l Matt. xii. 28. 2 Matt. xii. 31. 3 John xvi. 16, 22. 4 Acts i. 6. 



THE HOLY SPIRIT A DIVINE PERSON. 155 

coining of the Comforter : "I will pray the Father, and* 
He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide 
with you forever " — a Helper ever within call ; an Advo- 
cate always at command. This Comforter would even be 
nearer to them and more constantly with them than Christ 
had been in His bodily presence. " He dwelleth with you 
and shall be in you." He would come in a manner in- 
visible to the world, and that the worldly mind could not 
comprehend: come through the quickening of the con- 
sciousness to a realization of higher spiritual truths ; come 
as a gracious, soothing, healing influence upon the mind 
itself in the deepest concernments of the soul ; come in the 
experiences of the inner life in the love of Christ, in the 
sense of the forgiveness of sin and of fellowship with God, 
in the feelings of hope, comfort, peace, joy, in all that per- 
tains to our relations with our Heavenly Father and to 
our final salvation. As Christ became incarnate in Hu- 
manity for its redemption, so is the Holy Spirit perpetually 
incarnate in the Church for its sanctification. 

All the teaching of Christ concerning the Holy Ghost 
assumes or implies both the divinity of the Spirit and His 
distinct personality. He spake of the Spirit not as a thing, 
an attribute, an influence, a property, but as a person ; He 
ascribed to the Spirit such acts and offices as can be af- 
firmed only of a person ; had He said " I will send My 
spirit or My Father will send His spirit," this might have 
meant nothing more than that He would cause them to 
feel an influence from Himself, or that an influence pro- 
ceeding from God would bring their feelings and actions 
into accord with the spirit of Christ. Had He promised 
to His disciples specifically a spirit of wisdom or a spirit of 
power, this might have signified nothing more than .a guid- 
ance or an efficiency imparted by divine influence. But 
He spake of the Spirit, — thus defining one distinct Spirit ; 
the Holy Spirit, designating the Spirit by a personal and 



156 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

moral characteristic ; and He used the personal pronoun — 
" the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in My name ; 
whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, 
neither knoweth Him." l This constant use of " He " and 
" Him " denotes personality ; it would be a solecism thus 
to speak of an unconscious influence. 

Jesus said, also, of the Holy Spirit, He shall abide with 
you ; He shall teach you ; He shall guide you ; He shall 
hear and shall speak; He shall glorify Me ; He shall tes- 
tify of Me ; — all which are personal acts, which no stretch 
of metaphor could predicate of an unconscious influence. 

Moreover, a personality is attributed to the Holy Spirit 
as distinct from the Father and the Son : " I will pray the 
Father ;" now prayer is the act of one personal conscious- 
ness addressing itself to .another : " I " and " the Father ;" 
and He, i. e., the Father, " shall give you another Com- 
forter " — a Helper in the stead of Jesus ;— that He, this 
Comforter thus distinguished from both the Father and 
the Son, may " abide with you forever." Leaving all meta- 
physical refinements about personality, in the doctrine of 
Jesus, the Holy Spirit is so far distinct from the Father 
and the Son that the pronouns in the first, second, and 
third persons may be applied to them separately, and to 
describe their relations and actions one toward another. 

At the same time, His doctrine ascribes to the Holy 
Spirit a true and proper -divinity ; — the acts and attributes 
of divinity, absolute knowledge, foresight of things to come, 
power over the memory, the thoughts, and the wills of 
men, and power to impart miraculous gifts. In the form- 
ula of baptism, the sacrament by which disciples are ini- 
tiated into the kingdom of Christ, the name of the Holy 
Spirit is linked upon equal terms with the names of Christ 
and of the Father : — " baptizing them in the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." 2 Here 

1 John xiv. 17. 2 Matt. xxviii. 19. 



THE HOLY SPIRIT A DIVINE PERSON. 157 

the "Name" denotes personality ; and in the solemn con- 
secration of a soul to its Creator and Lord, it is not credi- 
ble that anything lower than Divinity would be associated 
with the Name that is above every name, as worthy of like 
homage and devotion. But it was in condemning the 
blasphemy of the Pharisees that Jesus set forth in the 
strongest terms the divine personality of the Holy Ghost. 
While His own divinity was veiled under the humiliation 
of the flesh, men might impugn His acts and oe pardoned; 
but so clear and strong is the proof of divine power in acts 
performed by the Spirit of God, that to contemn Him is 
an unpardonable sin. " Whosoever speaketh a word 
against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him ; but 
whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not 
be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the 
world to come." 

This doctrine of Jesus is a warrant for faith in the Gospels 
as a divinely inspired record of Himself. Since the Holy 
Spirit quickened and guided the apostles in the recollection, 
the conception, and the statement of truth as uttered by 
Christ Himself, the record of the words of Jesus in the 
Gospels is authenticated by divine authority ; and should 
therefore be received with loving reverence and obedience. 
Like a great poem or symphony it carries within itself the 
tokens of the Master. And He who is perpetually in the 
Truth, quickening the letter into life, is also in the world 
convincing men of this same truth ; convincing them of 
their sin and their need of a Saviour ; convincing them of 
the righteousness of Christ, and His power as the Holy Son 
of God to save them from their sin ; convincing them of 
judgment, the condemnation under which every sinner 
lies, the condemnation that is upon the world, and the 
judgment to come : and so the Spirit who is in the truth, 
is also by the truth speaking to the hearts of men with 
conviction. 



158 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

How full of responsibility is the hearing of the Gospel, 
seeing that in it God speaks to every man, as He spake to 
Israel face to face ! How full of peril is it to disobey the 
Gospel, seeing that he who resists this truth resists the 
Holy Ghost. But how full of encouragement also, to all 
who proclaim the Gospel is the assurance that the Spirit of 
God who inspired it at the first, still lives in it and speaks 
through it. To human view the conversion of a soul that 
is committed to selfishness by force of will, by pride and 
habit, or that is steeped in iniquity and hemmed round 
with evil associations, may appear not only difficult but 
hopeless. But when Jesus commanded His disciples to go 
into all the world and preach the Gospel to eveiy creature, 
He appointed the divine word as the instrument and prom- 
ised the divine Spirit as the power, and with these all 
things are possible to him that belie veth. 

The personal bearings of Christ's doctrine of the Holy 
Spirit are of inestimable value. His predominant thought 
in the promise of the Spirit to His disciples was their com- 
fort under bereavement and their endowment for the labors 
and conflicts of His service. So far from promising them 
exemption from trials, He forewarned them of tribulations 
that would arise out of the very fact of their discipleship ; l 
but in the sore bereavement of His absence, the Comforter, 
the Helper would be ever within call. Every word of this 
precious promise stands good for every disciple and for all 
time ; to every bereaved and sorrowing but trusting heart 
the Comforter comes; to every burdened, struggling, but 
praying and believing soul, the Helper is nigh. Men 
often proffer sympathy without help or help without sym- 
pathy ; but in the coming of the Holy Ghost are pledged 
both comfort and help, available and satisfying. 

And in that coming, moreover, is our grandest incite- 
ment and hope for the endeavor of holy living. To attain 

J John xvi. 33. 



THE HOLY GHOST A HELPER. 159 

moral perfection is, at times at least, the aspiration of every 
true soul. No one of the beatitudes so thrills the heart 
with longings for its own disenthralment from evil, as this ; 
" Blessed are the pure in heart ; for they shall see God." l 
That beatific vision has been the dream of poetry and 
philosophy, that likeness to God the longing of devotion. 
But what poetry and philosophy have depicted in the in- 
finite distance, and devotion has sighed for with wingless 
and baffled desires, finding still 

" Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become," 

is brought within reach, made possible, made actual, when 
the Holy Spirit of God comes to dwell in our hearts, to 
teach us all things, to guide us into all truth and show us 
things to come. Renovated through the virtue of this Holy 
Presence, and illuminated with this inward guidance, the 
soul may see God. 2 

1 Mat. v. 8. 
1 For a fuller discussion of the New Testament doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 
see the author's volume on " The Holy Comforter." 



CHAPTER XIII. 

PARADISE. 

The Theology of Christ has always a background of 
Eschatology ; and His doctrine of the Last Things is one 
of the most distinctive features of His system. All His 
teachings point to His second coming, and to the marvel- 
lous events which shall attend that both to the living and 
the dead. The Kingdom of Heaven shall then be per- 
fected ; the Son of Man shall appear in power and glory, 
and the issues of the present life shall be made up in the 
unchanging conditions of the Hereafter. 

But until that great consummation what and where shall 
be the state of the dead ? Do they sleep in unconscious- 
ness? Do they enter at once upon their final state of 
award ? Or do they linger in some intermediate state of 
uncertainty, of imperfection, possibly of purgatory ? 

The reticence of Jesus upon such points as these is in 
marked contrast with His pronounced utterances concern- 
ing the finalities of the future state, and with the eagerness 
of the human mind, and especially of human affection, to 
withdraw the veil from what directly follows death. The 
poet l has well expressed both the longing and the mys- 
tery, " when Lazarus left his enamel-cave." 

" Where wert thou, brother, those four days ?" 

There lives no record of reply, 

Which, telling what it is to die, 
Had surely added praise to praise. 

Behold a man raised up by Christ ! 

The rest remaineth unrevealed. 

He told it not ; or something sealed 
The lips of that Evangelist. 

1 Tennyson, In Memoriam, xxxi. 

160 



PARADISE. 161 

Upon all that concerns the state of the departed Christ 
addressed Himself not to curiosity but to faith ; not to the 
speculative fancy but to the moral feelings, and this by 
setting up character rather than condition as the object of 
attainment. Unless the parable of Dives and Lazarus be 
understood of a scene in Hades, there is hardly anything 
in the teachings of Christ concerning the state of the soul 
between death and the judgment. Yet by one brief word 
uttered just as He was expiring on the cross, Jesus lifted 
the veil from untold possibilities of life and felicity to the 
soul after death. One of the malefactors at His side said 
unto Him, " Lord, remember me when Thou comest into 
Thy kingdom." " And Jesus said unto him, Verily, I say 
unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise. " ! 

What mysterious questionings start up at the reading of 
these words. They were the promise of the dying Saviour 
to the penitent transgressor. They were the answer to the 
prayer of a public criminal, who confessed the justice of 
his condemnation for his deeds ; but who, amid the agony 
of a lingering death, turned to Jesus with the homage of 
his soul, and the prayer of adoration and trust. Most sug- 
gestive are they of the compassion and grace of the Re- 
deemer, and of the certainty of salvation to every true 
penitent. 

But our inquiry is now directed to the terms and con- 
tents of the promise. Where did Jesus promise to convey 
the spirit of the dying thief? To Paradise. When f To- 
day. In what society would he there be ? With Christ 
Himself. To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise. 

What, then, and where is Paradise ? Is this only an- 
other term for heaven ? Does it signify the final blessed- 
ness of the righteous? or does it apply to some state interme- 
diate between death and the judgment, in which the soul 

1 Luke xxiii. 42, 43. 
11 



162 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

awaits the resurrection of the body, before entering into its 
final abode? 

The state of departed saints directly after death has 
been the subject of wide speculation in the Church from 
the earliest times; and the most opposite theories have 
been broached according to the prevalence of a more 
sensuous or a more spiritual philosophy, of a more literal 
or a more fanciful interpretation of the Scriptures. Justin 
Martyr, who lived in the first half of the second century, 
denounced as a heresy the doctrine that souls are immedi- 
ately received into heaven at death, and maintained that 
the souls of the righteous depart to a temporary but hap- 
py place — an intermediate state. On the other hand, 
(Jyprian, bishop of Carthage about the middle of the third 
century, held that those dying in the Lord were taken im- 
mediately to His presence. Again : Tertullian, at the be- 
ginning of the third century, believed that Martyrs went 
immediately to heaven, but that for believers in general^ 
there was a delay in some intermediate state, before arriv- 
ing at the heavenly glory ; whereas Origen, who flou- 
rished at Alexandria at about the same period, taught that 
immediately after death believers go first to Paradise, 
which he imagined to be a happy island ; as they grow in 
knowledge and piety, they proceed on their journey from 
Paradise to higher regions, and having passed through 
various mansions which the Scriptures call heavens, they 
arrive at last at the kingdom of heaven, properly so called. 
The perfection of blessedness ensues only after the general 
judgment. l 

In later times the doctrine of purgatory was added to 
that of the intermediate state by the Latin Church, though 
never accepted by the Greek Church. At the Reforma- 
tion, many Protestant theologians in rejecting a purgatory, 
rejected also the notion of an intermediate state, while 

1 See citations in Hagenbaoh, History of Doctrines, $ 77, 78. 



VIEWS OF THE EARLY FATHERS. 163 

others retained the doctrine that the souls of the righteous 
linger in some vestibule of the heavenly kingdom until 
the last judgment. The former view is well-expressed in 
the burial service of the Church of England for the dead : 
" Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of those 
that depart hence in the Lord, and with whom the souls 
of the faithful, after they are delivered from the burden of 
the flesh, are in joy and felicity." 

The belief in an intermediate state for the righteous, in 
which they await the consummation of all things before be- 
ing presented at the throne of the Father, obtains especially 
in the Lutheran communion, but has able advocates as well 
in other communions ; so that from the earliest times till 
now, this has been a subject upon which great latitude of* 
opinion and great diversity of theory have been admitted 
within the range of Orthodoxy. 

The notions of some of the early Fathers were in- 
fluenced by the pagan philosophy in which they had been 
trained before their conversion, and which instead of being 
wholly discarded was applied, sometimes unconsciously, to 
the interpretation of Christian doctrines. Thus the specu- 
lations of Persia and Greece concerning the transportation 
of the soul through a series of abodes up toward the dwell- 
ing-place of the gods, found their way under modified 
forms into Christian theology. The Jewish Rabbis had 
long been addicted to fanciful allegories concerning the 
kingdom of the Messiah ; in His reign the garden of Eden 
was to be restored, and the righteous would dwell in Para- 
dise, with royal apparel, in palaces of gold, amid groves and 
fountains and flowers of wondrous fragrance .and healing 
virtue. Such Scriptures as the thirty-fifth chapter of Isaiah 
were taken as a literal picture of the abundance of sensu- 
ous delights in this Messianic Paradise ; and the apocry- 
phal book of Esdras promises to the children of God a 
dwelling in a beautiful garden, where are streams of milk 



164 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

and honey, and mountains covered with lilies and roses. 
Such views tinctured the popular belief of the Jews con- 
cerning the future abode of the righteous, and we trace 
their influence also in some of the early Christian writings. 

But the great storehouse or rather university of ideas 
concerning the future state was Egypt — from which the 
Greeks and Romans derived their most impressive notions 
of the experiences of the soul after death. The book of 
prayers and forms which the Egyptians deposited in the 
tomb as a sort of guide and passport for the departed spirit 
through the world of the dead, teaches that the soul con- 
tinues conscious after death ; that it enters into Hades, a 
gloomy region under the earth ; that if already pure it 
passes safely through this dismal abode ; but if impure or 
defective is subjected to discipline ; that on emerging from 
Hades it is judged, and having passed this ordeal it 
advances through seven distinct halls up to as many pal- 
aces, till it arrives at last at the chief dwelling of the gods. 
Prominent in this conception of the Future State was the 
notion of a detention after death in a sort of border-land, 
before reaching the highest blessedness, and of a gradation 
through which the soul must pass in its ascent to the Ely- 
sian fields — which answered to Paradise. 1 

We trace this general conception down through the lit- 
erature of later nations, and find it culminating at last in 
the magnificent poem of Dante. In his Paradise are 
ten heavens, nine of which revolve about the earth as a 
common center, each filling the sphere of a planet, and the 
tenth or highest is motionless, and encircles and contains 
all the rest. Each of these heavens contains spirits in dif- 
ferent degrees of advancement toward perfection ; in the 

1 For a complete view of the Egyptian doctrine of a future state, see the 
" Book of the Dead, " translated by Dr. Birch, in Egypt's Place in Universal 
History, vol. v. ; also an analysis of the same by the author of this volume, in 
the Bibliotheca Sacra for 1868, pp. 69-112. 



MEANING OF PARADISE. 165 

ninth are the Orders of Angels, and in the tenth is the 
visible presence of God. 

Thus in all ages and among all people have contempla- 
tive and imaginative minds — philosophers, poets, theologi- 
ans, — been exercised upon the state of the soul after death, 
and especially whether it is in a condition of immediate 
consciousness and blessedness ; or for a time unconscious or 
asleep — to be hereafter vivified ; or, if conscious, whether 
at once made perfect in bliss, or subjected to intermediate 
delays and changes in its progress towards the highest 
phase of its existence. Hardly any question has for the 
human mind such a universal power of fascination. Yet 
in comparison with the fundamental fact of a future state of 
rewards and punishments to become at some time the 
experience of every human soul, these details of time and 
mode are more curious than momentous, and are treated in 
the sacred Scriptures with a discreet silence. Only hints 
are given, where our instinct of immortality craves minute 
and copious information ; and the best Biblical students are 
far from agreed in their interpretation of these hints, or 
in the doctrines they would base upon them. Still 
the field is open for ever-new inquiry, and by comparing 
spiritual things with spiritual we may get at least an ink- 
ling of the truth. 

What did our Lord intend by Paradise ? This was the 
only instance in which He used the word, except as John 
cites it from His lips, in the Apocalypse ; l and it occurs 
but once besides in the New Testament. 2 It is a word of 
Eastern origin which the Greeks borrowed to describe an 
oriental park — such for instance as the Greek general 
Xenophon saw on his famous march into the interior of 
Asia — and which is described as " a wide park enclosed 
against injury, yet with its natural beauty unspoiled, with 
stately forest trees, many of them bearing fruit, watered by 

1 Rev. ii. 7. 2 2 Cor. xii. 4. 



166 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 



clear streams, on whose banks roved large herds of ante- 
lopes or sheep." l For this feature of Easte: 2 scenery — re- 
sembling somewhat the forest of Fontainebleau in France, 
though more rich and luxuriant — the Greeks adopted from 
the Sanscrit the name Paradise. 

This word came into the New Testament through the 
Septuagint ; for the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures, made three centuries before Christ, was widely in use 
among the Jews in His time, and many of the quotations 
from the Old Testament in the New are made from that 
version. In the Septuagint Paradise is used for Eden, 
wherever that word occurs in the English version, and 
a^so for garden. Thus where Solomon says " I made me 
gardens and orchards," 2 the Septuagint reads, " Paradises." 
In the prophecy of Balaam : " How goodly are thy tents, 
O Jacob ; as the valleys are they spread forth, as gardens 
{Paradises) by the river side." 3 In the book of Nehemiah 
is a curious instance of the same meaning that Xenophon 
gave to the word. Nehemiah who lived at the court of 
Babylon, says " The king gave me a letter to Asaph, the 
keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to 
make beams for the gates of the palace." 4 The word 
" forest " here the Septuagint gives Paradise — a pleasure- 
forest or preserve. The first notion of Paradise to a Jew 
therefore, was a royal garden like Eden ; indeed the gar- 
den in which our first parents were placed was " the Para- 
dise of God." 

But Paradise was not simply a remembered name ; it 
was a word of promise and hope as well : for in the pro- 
phet Isaiah, it is a frequent type of the future blessedness 
and glory of the people of God. " The Lord shall com- 
fort Zion : He will comfort all her waste places : and He 
will make her wilderness like Eden and her desert like 
the garden of the Lord." 5 Paradise was the word adopted 

i Smith's Diet, of Bible. 2 Eccles. ii. 5. 3 Num. xxiv. 6. * Neh. ii. 8. Hi. 3. 



JEWISH VIEWS OF PARADISE. 167 

by the Septuagint to describe this scene of beauty — "joy 
and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and the 
voice of melody." 

Such being the idea of Paradise in that version of the 
Scriptures then widely used among the Jews, and which 
Christ Himself probably read from in the synagogues, 
what promise did He intend to convey to the thief at his 
side when He said, " To-day Thou shalt be with Me in 
Paradise ?" He did not explain the term ; He would not 
tantalize His fellow-sufferer with an unintelligible reply ; 
it must have had a satisfying meaning to the mind of a 
common Jew. 

We have seen that the Jewish Rabbis had gone beyond 
the Biblical idea of the term, and had pictured Paradise as 
either a place of sensuous delights in the Messiah's king- 
dom upon earth, or an intermediate place of blessedness 
after death ; and some of the more intellectual among them, 
such as Philo, had made Paradise a mere symbol of the 
happiness to be derived from wisdom. But shall we there- 
fore attach to the word Paradise as used by Christ 
the popular notion of " a fair land cooled by ocean breezes 
and watered by limpid streams, where the souls of the 
righteous would tarry awhile on their way to heaven : or 
a region in the upper part of Sheol, somehow divided from 
the place of the wicked, but not the final resting-place of 
the good ?" Surely Christ's method of teaching forbids us 
to assume that, by using a term of common speech, He 
would countenance the erroneous notions which the popu- 
lar imagination had attached to that word. The Jewish 
popular belief was full of errors concerning the Messiah, 
and the kingdom of heaven ; but Jesus neither refrained 
from using these terms, nor by using them did He sanc- 
tion the erroneous notions which attached to them in the 
popular mind. Rather, He sought to reclaim such words 
to their proper significance. Hence inasmuch as the term 



168 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

Paradise was essentially a Bible-word through its frequent 
use in a translation as widely read as the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures — we must look for the meaning of Paradise, not to 
the popular belief nor the fancies of the Rabbis, not to the 
speculative Philo nor the credulous Josephus, but to 
the fundamental idea of the first Paiadise in the Old Testa- 
ment, as this was illustrated by the spiritual teaching of 
our Lord. It were easy to poetize or philosophize here ; 
but the question is one of interpretation. 

The primitive Paradise — the first abode of man — em- 
braced these elements ; a state of purity or innocence ; a 
place of beauty, abundance and delight, or a condition of 
peaceful, and entire satisfaction ; the nearness of God as 
the loving Father : and an implied pledge of immortality. 
The true life in Paradise was without sin — for when man 
sinned he was cast out from the garden ; life in Paradise 
was free from want and care — for toil and pain came as the 
curse of sin : life in Paradise was one of plenty and de- 
light — for the garden was planted with " every tree that 
was pleasant to the sight and good for food ;" 1 life in 
Paradise was favored with frequent manifestations of the 
presence of God — for the Lord God walked in the garden, 
He talked with Adam, instructed and blessed him, making 
every provision for his happiness as an expression of his 
Maker's love. And this life carried with it the presump- 
tion of its immortality — for the symbolic tree of life stood 
in the midst of the garden, like a covenant in perpetuity, 
and death was threatened as a consequence of sin. Such a 
Life, pure, peaceful, satisfying, blessed with the presence 
of God and the promise of immortality, was the Eden of the 
Hebrew Scriptures, which in popular language, long before 
the time of Christ, had come to be familiarly known as 
Paradise* And the restoration of this Paradise w&> looked 

iGen. ii. 9. 



PARADISE WITH CHRIST. 169 

for under the reign of the Messiah, whose coming would 
make the desert like the Paradise of God. 

In the popular belief this would be a state of felicity 
such as poets have pictured in the golden age; but it 
would supercede the present condition of things, this dis- 
ordered world of sin, pain, and sorrow, and would over-lap 
into the future state ; and so the word Paradise came to 
signify some serene and blissful state of being, this side of 
heaven in the order of time and space, but conducting to 
heaven as a sort of middle-way. 

Jesus took this word, Paradise, as the equivalent of 
Eden, and announced the realization of that state of 
primitive blessedness in the spirit- world which He would 
open to all believers. It is quite evident that Christ used 
the word to denote a condition after death. Both He and 
the sufferer at His side were presently to have done with 
this world ; and Jesus intended to give to the penitent 
thief a promise of hope and encouragement concerning 
that which should survive the cross. There was for him 
somewhere a better world to which Christ would conduct 
him after death ; for wherever Jesus Himself w r ould be 
after the dissolution of the body, there should this believ- 
ing penitent also be. Surely the promise contemplated a 
state of consciousness, and a desirable state ; since going 
into some gloomy house of detention or limbo, — there to 
be kept in uncertainty till the end of the world — could 
have offered small encouragement as the boon of the 
Saviour to one who offered such a prayer with such a faith. 
The prayer was remarkable as acknowledging the suprem- 
acy of Christ, and the spirituality of His kingdom; 
" Lord, remember me when thou comest into Thy king- 
dom." Here was a soul touched with the sense of its own 
guilt, discerning the real majesty of Jesus through the suf- 
ferings of the cross, and anticipating for this despised 
King of the Jews, a kingdom of power and glory in that 



170 THE THEOLOGY OF CHEIST. 

invisible state to which they both were now departing. 
The petition referred to a future and spiritual kingdom — 
a sphere of glory awaiting the Redeemer after death ; and 
the answer of Christ to such a petition must be interpreted 
in the same spirit. 

The parallel expression in the Apocalypse furnishes a 
key in part to this answer of our Lord. As there quoted 
by John, in promising rewards to those who shall continue 
faithful in His service, Christ said, " To him that over- 
cometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the 
midst of the Paradise of God." * To eat of the tree of Life 
is to partake of immortal bliss ; the Paradise of God is the 
Paradise that God delights in and blesses with His pre- 
sence; — the promise means that all of communion with 
God, all of spiritual delight, and all of immortal hope, 
life, and bliss that were lost by the fall, shall be realized 
in the spirit-world where Christ now lives and reigns. 

If we inquire more particularly after the location of 
Paradise and the phases of existence and enjoyment there, 
we find little to enlighten us in the New Testament Scrip- 
tures. Paul, in describing a frame of supernatural illumi- 
nation by the Spirit of God, says that he was " caught up 
into Paradise, and heard unspeakable w r ords which it is 
not possible for a man to utter ;" 2 and this Paradise he 
speaks of again as " the third heaven " — a phrase denoting 
" an exalted region of light and blessedness, or the imme- 
diate presence of God." But where and what this was is 
precisely what the Apostle has omitted to inform us ; and 
no speculation on our part can supply these omissions of 
the Revelation. 

This much then — neither more nor less — do we learn 
from the word Paradise itself as interpreted by Biblical 
usage: — a state of peace, security, holiness, satisfaction, bles- 
sedness, where the presence of God is more immediately 

1 Rev. ii. 7. a 2 Cor. xii. 4. 



SCRIPTURAL MEANING OF PARADISE. 171 

manifested. But there are other facts or hints in the words 
of Christ touching the condition of departed saints immedi- 
ately after death, which may here be grouped together for 
their combined light upon the question. 

First, Christ clearly taught that the personality of the 
soul remains in conscious exercise. The parable of Laza- 
rus and Dives shows this; so does the appearing of Moses 
and Elias on the Mount: so do the words of our Lord con- 
cerning the patriarchs : " He is not a God of the dead, but 
of the living : for all live unto Him." l 

Again, the language of Christ to His disciples, in view 
of His own departure, implies that directly after death be- 
lievers enter into a closer union with their Lord. We may 
fairly assume that the felicity promised to the dying male- 
factor was not exceptional ; that such a one as he had been 
was not singled out for a favor that would not be accorded 
to disciples who had given proof of their devotion in their 
lives. This presumption becomes certainty in view of the 
assurance of Jesus to His disciples : " I go to prepare a 
place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I 
will come again and receive you unto Myself; that where 
I am, there ye may be also." 2 This promise did not re- 
late to that final Advent when Christ will gather around 
His person the collective host of His Eedeemed ; it was 
spoken to the eleven disciples as individuals, for whom 
severally a place should be prepared in the " many man- 
sions " of His " Father's house." The consciousness of the 
presence of Christ, and a participation in His glory, would 
be the experience of these disciples when they should fol- 
low their Lord to the unseen world. 3 

From these sayings, brief and fragmentary as they are, we 
may gather that they who die in the Lord become imme- 
diately conscious of a nearer union with Christ than they 
had ever attained to in the most devout and extatic com- 

1 Luke xx. 38. a John xiv. 2, 3. 3 John xvii. 24. 



172 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

runnings of this life ; that after they are delivered from the 
burden of the flesh they do live unto God and are in joy 
and felicity ; that dying is only the birth of the soul into a 
higher existence for which its qualities and powers of in- 
telligent moral 'personality are at once an adaptation and a 
prophecy ; and for which also, it is prepared in character 
by the grace of God, — so that to be " absent from the body" 
is to be " present with the Lord," consciously in the satis- 
fying presence of Christ. 

According to the psychology cf the Bible, after the death 
of the animal part of man, there survive both the spiritual 
essence, which is the proper personality, and the principle 
of vitality, and this last enters into union with some form 
adapted to this higher state of being, some kind of vesture — 
though it may have no more material substance than the 
invisible ether. The Bible holds fast by Personality ; the 
human spirit is not absorbed into the divine ; neither does 
it float vaguely into space ; it has positiveness, definiteness, 
is somehow circumscribed ; or in common speech, it must 
have a body ; not flesh and blood, for this is forever put 
away ; not yet the spiritual body — for that comes after the 
resurrection ; but a vesture fitted to a spiritual existence ; 
so that "being clothed we shall not be found naked." 1 
After the dissolution of our earthly house, which is only a 
tabernacle — a temporary abode — and which is a burden, 
both through its infirmities and by its inability to carry 
out all the aspirations of the spirit — we shall be " clothed 
upon with our house which is from heaven" — a form adapt- 
ed to the region of spiritual life. 2 Death will only strip us 
of our mortality ; it is not we that die, but our mortality; 
and then the soul, freed from the body of death, will be 
" clothed upon," clad in its proper vesture as a spiritual 
creature — no longer of the earth earthy — all trace of mor- 

i 2 Cor. v. 1-5. 
J For views of Delitzsch and others on this intermediate body, see Appendix. 



DEPARTURE OF THE SOUL. 173 

tality swallowed up of life — the very soil and smell of 
earth gone from the shimmering gossamer, in which it 
floats or flies through the boundless scope of heaven. 1 

The Egyptians symbolized the departure of the soul by 
a bird quitting the breast of the mummy to fly away 
toward the Sun. When purified it returns to its mummy 
with the kiss of peace. In the great picture of the Com- 
munion of St. Jerome, while the expiring Saint is making 
his last Confession of Christ, one sees above him a bevy 
of cherubs fairly capering with joy as they drop their 
golden canopy of cloud to embrace the soul at the moment 
of its exit — that mortality might be swallowed up of life. 

But while each departing saint, his personality unchang- 
ed, his spiritual vitality untouched by death, enters with an 
exalted consciousness of life and of spiritual powers, into a 
blissful fellowship with Christ in Paradise — there will re- 
main for him some more glorious consummation at the 
resurrection of the dead. The Paradise to which he goes 
may be as the park that surrounds the palace of the king ; 
he may have the freest range of the park and the gardens, 
and may look through the paling upon the golden House 
of Beauty, and behold at times the face of the King, and 

1 Dante has beautifully pictured this ethereal body as investing the soul when, 
at death, 

It separates from the flesh, and virtually 

Bears with itself the human and divine ; 
The other faculties are voiceless allj 

The memory, the intelligence, and the will 

In action far more vigorous than before. 
And even as the air, when full of rain, 

By alien rays that are therein reflected, 

With divers colors shows itself adorned, 
So there the neighboring air doth shape itself 

Into that form which doth impress upon it 

Virtually the Soul that has stood still. 
And then in manner of the little flame, 

Which followeth the fire where'er it shifts, 

After the Spirit followeth its new Form. 

Purgaiorin. xxv. 80-100. Longfellow's Translation. 



174 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

hear the praises of the cherubim — but he must wait for 
the gathering of the whole company from earth, and the 
endowment of the spiritual body before the gates that 
divide the palace from the park shall be thrown open that 
he may enter in. His blessedness from the first will be 
full even to the measure of his capacity, but the resurrection 
and his transformation into the likeness of Christ's glorious 
body will augment both his capacity and his means of 
blessedness. 

The distinction is well taken here by Nitzsch, between 
the believer's entering into bliss and his consummation in 
and with the whole body of the Redeemed. " The mere 
duration and immortality of the soul, or the bare deliver- 
ance from its earthly habitation, does not complete Chris- 
tian hope ; for the consummation of the individual is by no 
means perfect, so long as the entire creation and church 
are not consummated with him and he with them." l Many 
Scriptures point to the general resurrection as the enfran- 
chisement of the creation itself — which now waits and 
groans for that manifestation of the sons of God which 
shall come through the redemption of the body. The 
completeness of man in Christ will not be accomplished 
till, by the resurrection, death shall be vanquished in our 
bodies as it was in His. That event is set before us as the 
consummation of the whole work of Redemption ; and the 
period between our departure and that Day will be for us 
an intermediate state — but a Paradise of intense delights 
and of conscious nearness and fellowship with Christ. 
But the crowning bliss shall not be till the resurrection : 
" Then cometh the end ; when the Son shall deliver up 
the kingdom to God, even the Father, and God shall be 
all in all." 2 

In that august day " the Lord Himself shall descend 
from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel 

1 System of Christian Doctrine g 217. 2 1 Cor. xv. 24. 



INSCRIPTIONS ON THE CATACOMBS. 175 

and the trump of God; arid the dead in- Christ shall rise 
first, then believers yet living on the earth shall be caught 
up together with them in the clouds ;" l then shall go up 
the grand procession to the gates of the New Jerusalem 
swung open in mid-air — the trumpets sounding, the vast 
ether palpitating with harmonic symphonies ; the sons of 
God shouting for joy, the very stars, ringing out silvery 
chimes for the marriage of the Lamb — the final consum- 
mation of all things terrestrial and celestial in the union 
of Christ and His church in everlasting joy. 2 

This view of the state of departed saints may well 
encourage cheerfulness and thanksgiving on behalf of 
those whom Christ has taken to Himself. No need 
have we to pray for them, seeing they are already with 
Christ: no cause have we to mourn for them, seeing trat 
directly they are absent from the body they are present 
with the Lord ; — " Now that he is dead, wherefore should 
I fast? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to 
me." 3 

To the primitive Christians all this was reality. They 
have left their faith and hope recorded upon the tombs 
which they constructed in their hiding-places in the sub- 
terranean excavations or quarries of the city of Rome. 
In those long galleries of catacombs, where the bodies of 
martyrs and persecuted saints were laid to rest, there is not 
one trace of despondency or gloom. It is written over one 

1 1 Thess. iv. 16, 17. 

2 Although the details of this description are borrowed from the Apostolic 
writings, the germs of the whole conception are found in the teachings of 
Christ ; and the words of Paul are not here cited as authoritative — for we are 
concerned solely with Christ's own words as the source of authoritative belief 
--but as illustrating the meaning of Christ from the point of a scholar and 
disciple who was versed both in the Jewish and the Pagan notions of Hades, 
and who has embodied in one proportionate form the fragmentary hints of his 
Lord touching the future state. 

8 2 Samuel xii. 23. 






176 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST, 

and another " She sleeps ;" " In peace ;" « With Christ." 
The anchor, the cross, the crown, the symbols of the resur- 
rection and immortality make those dark galleries bright 
with the presence of the Eternal Life. 

This doctrine should inspire the Christian disciple with 
the glad consciousness of the nearness of his Lord at death. 
The effort to find for heaven a locality commonly results 
in placing it at an immense remove in space and time ; the 
attempt to define its features and occupations results in 
vague imaginings ; meantime Paradise comes floating 
down to us, and Jesus steps to the bedside of one whom 
we think dying, and says " I come to receive thee to My- 
salf; To-day sh alt thou be with Me in Paradise ;" and 
could our vision be purged, like that of the prophet, we 
might see the mountains full of chariots of fire. Heaven 
is around us ; if we are Christ's, one step and we are there ! 
Then why let earth trouble, delude, engross, or detain us ? 
And why should death intimidate us ? 

Christ's doctrine of the future opens before us the gran- 
deur of the moral universe and of the work of Redemption. 
The science of astronomy has revealed to us somewhat of 
the stupendous scale of the physical creation ; worlds cir- 
cling about worlds, systems circling about systems, through 
millions of leagues of space ; light traversing immensity 
with its ever-repeating waves ; the laws of attraction and 
gravitation ruling the hosts of heaven without voice or 
speech ; and all this ordered beauty and grandeur obedient 
to one Infinite and Invisible Power. But this material 
creation is only the theater of the moral universe ; these 
innumerable worlds are but the many mansions in the 
vast house of our Father, for the home of His children ; 
this illimitable space is but the field of their activities and 
joys! The physical may change and pass away ; the hea- 
vens depart as a scroll ; but the moral universe shall then 
" grow resplendent more and more ;" — as we 



GRANDEUR OF REDEMPTION. 177 

" behold the hours 
Of Christ's triumphal march, and all the fruit 
Harvested by the rollipg of these spheres." 1 

Then to every one who is found faithful to Christ, will 
it be given to " eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst 
of the Paradise of God." 

1 Dante, Paradiso. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 

Christianity concerns itself for the restoration of the 
Body as well as for the redemption of the Soul. To re- 
deem and sanctify the Soul is its first office and endeavor ; 
but it also cherishes and honors the body as the workman- 
ship of God and as the habitation of the soul, and the me- 
dium through which it acts upon the outer world, and 
receives from that impressions the most quickening, sug- 
gestive and controlling. 

The natural science of the Bible finds no link of develop- 
ment from the monkey to the man, but the first man was 
formed by the direct act of God, who " breathed into his 
nostrils the breath of life." 1 The philosophy of the Bible 
is not that of the Stoics, who regarded the body as the 
antagonist of the soul, and its suppression or destruction 
as necessary to the soul's perfection — for the divine Word 
was made flesh and exhibited the true harmony of the body 
with the soul ; nor is it the philosophy of the Epicureans, 
that made pleasure consist in gratifying and pampering 
the flesh — for it teaches that " the body is for the Lord," even 
"the temple of the Holy Ghost." 2 And this Religion 
which so honors the body in its origin and seeks to ennoble 
it with all care and culture for the present life, does not 
cease to regard the Body when death and the grave have 
claimed it. The consolation it offers as supreme is not that 
the soul is freed from its burden and clog, that the lower 
nature is dropped for the freer development of the higher ; 

l Chen. ii. 7. 2 1 Cor. vi. 13, 19. 

178 



VALUE OF THE BODY. 179 

but Christianity promises to cherish the buried dust as 
God's seed-corn, and to give this back again in the beauty 
and vigor of an incorruptible life. Over against the grave 
it writes the Resurrection; over against Death the Life 
Everlasting ; and Jesus surrenders His own sinless body to 
the demand of our common mortality; yields up the 
ghost, is dead and buried ; then comes forth in the victori- 
ous assertion of that undying Personality which unbars for 
us the gates of death and the grave : " I am the Resurrec- 
tion and the Life." 1 

And herein Christianity shows itself in wondrous sym- 
pathy with the human heart : for much as we are taught 
that the true life and beauty and love are belongings of the 
soul, how do we cherish the body from first to last. How 
dear to the mother is the babe that gives as yet no sign of 
thought or speech; how every tiny member of that tiny 
form is written in her heart ; what beauty she discovers in 
just the ordinary beginnings of a human life; and even if 
her child lacks physical perfection, how does the very in- 
firmity cause it to be cherished the more tenderly ! In 
riper years, though what we prize as our possession in a 
friend is the soul — the mind and heart in sympathy with 
our own — yet we are forever longing for the presence, the 
word, the look that continually reassure us that we do 
possess the soul. When sickness comes, how fondly do we 
cling to the wasting form: and when death has snatched 
it, though faith assures us that the soul has gone to live 
above, and reason teaches that the body without the soul is 
nothing, yet do we count each hour precious that we may 
keep that body near us, and the last tie is not severed till 
it is taken away ; then comes the " sorrowing most of all, 
that we shall see the face no more ;" 2 and then too come the 
full sympathy and power of the Gospel in the assurance of 
the divine Redeemer, the risen Lord, who stands weeping 

1 John xi. 25. 2 Acts xx. 38. 



180 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

at our side, and speaks the undying consolation " Thy 
Brother shall Rise again." l 

The beauty, the force, the value of this assurance are 
utterly broken by two modes of interpretation that are 
sometimes applied to the subject ; the one makes the 
declaration " The Son quickeneth whom He will," 2 a 
figure of speech to describe the quickening of the soul into 
spiritual life; the other makes the promise "He that 
believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live," 3 
refer only to the continued life of the soul after death has 
terminated the life of the body * making the resurrection 
coincident with death, — the rising of the spirit into a 
higher sphere of existence, where death can never come. 
They who hold such views, like Swedenborg for instance, 
believe neither in a general resurrection of the dead ap- 
pointed for some remote period, nor in any resurrection or 
re-habilitation of the present body ; but give to all the 
language of the New Testament concerning the rising of 
the dead, a symbolic meaning, applying it either to a 
moral renovation in this life, or to the spiritual emancipa- 
tion and development of the righteous at death. 

We must, therefore, settle distinctly the meaning of 
words — if we would understand the doctrine of Jesus 
touching the resurrection. The word He used, avdazaat^ 
was applied to the act of raising up or restoring that 
which had fallen or lay prostrate. Thus the rebuilding of 
the walls of a city thrown down by war was an anastasis 
or resurrection. The wall stood in the same place, and 
was built in whole or in part of the same materials ; so 
that it was the same wall restored ; and this word anastasis 
is used by Homer and others for the act of rising from 
bed, especially after sickness. It is applied also to the 
lifting up of suppliants who were lying prostrate before a 

1 John xi. 23. 2 John v. 21. s John xi. 25. 



ANASTASIS A LITERAL RESURRECTION. 181 

templec Nor are there wanting instances in classic writers 
where anastasis, or a form of the same word, is directly 
applied to a rising from the dead. In the Iliad of 
Homer, Achilles driving the Trojans before him into the 
river Xanthus, sees coming up the bank, as if out of the 
stream itself, a son of Priam whom once before he had 
taken prisoner, had carried away in his own ship and sold 
into distant slavery. Startled by this apparition, as if a 
dead man had come to life, Achilles exclaims : — 

" strange ! my eyes behold a miracle. 
Sure the brave sons of Troy whom I have slain 
Will rise up from the nether darkness yet." 1 

This would be a literal anastasis of the dead. Again in 
that touching scene where the aged Priam, having heard 
that his only surviving son Hector had been wounded, 
ventures alone to the camp of Achilles to beg for the re- 
lease of his boy ; (alas, he is already dead !) and the stern 
warrior replies : — 2 

u Sorrow for thy son 
Will profit nought ; it cannot bring the dead 
To life again." 

Here the anastasis would be literally restoring the dead 
body to life, which Achilles declares to be impossible. A like 
example occurs in a tragedy of JEschylus, where, in de- 
scribing a murder, he says, 3 " When the dust has drunk 
up the blood of a man once dead, there is no raising it up " 
— no anastasis. 

This word then had no doubtful meaning; it was 
jfroperly applied to the lifting up, the restoring, the setting 
back in its place of a person or thing that had fallen or 
disappeared. As applied to the dead it would naturally 
denote a visible restoring of the body — such a raising up 
that it would be felt to be the same. 

1 xxi. 56, Mr. Bryant's version. 2 xxiv. 557, Mr. Bryant's version. 
3 Furies, 664. 



182 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

A belief in such a resurrection, pronounced by these 
Greek poets a thing impossible, had found a lodgment in 
some religions of antiquity. The ancient Egyptians be- 
stowed far more care upon their tombs than upon their 
houses; they called the abodes of the living inns, because 
these were occupied only for a limited period ; but the sepul- 
chres of the dead they called eternal habitations. Great 
pains were taken to preserve the body from corruption in 
order that it might again become the habitation of the 
soul. This is the most satisfactory explanation of the 
custom of embalming and the care taken to deposit the 
mummy in a secret and durable sepulchre. Upon some of 
the mummy-cases the soul is painted as a bird revisiting 
its former home ; and the Book of the Dead, 1 a kind of 
sacred hymn which was deposited with the mummy, re- 
presents the body as at last awaking to the light of the 
sun, and exclaiming, " Hail, O my Father ; I have come ; 
I prepare this my body ; I am not corrupted nor wasted 
away ; I am not suffocated ; I live, I grow, I wake in 
peace." 

The doctrine of the resurrection of the body is found 
also among the Persians, as far back as the third or fourth 
century B. C. in a sect of Magians " who taught that man 
would revive and become immortal with a fine ethereal 
body, and would lead a life of bliss upon an earth forever 
freed from the corrupting influence of evil." In their 
sacred books a great prophet is predicted to arise toward 
the expiration of this world's course ; who will appear as 
"The conqueror of death and the judge of the world." In 
the might of Ormuzd the chief divinity of the Parsee re- 
ligion, this prophet will awaken the dead. An objector is 
represented as asking, " Since wind and water carry off 
the remains of the body, how shall it be restored again ? " 

1 See an analysis of the Egyptian doctrine of the Future State, by the 
author in the Bibliotheca Sacra, 1868, p. 69. 



THE RESURRECTION A JEWISH BELIEF. 3.83 

But in reply, Ormuzd, the divinity, points to his almighty 
powers of creation ; and as he is the creator of the grain 
of corn, which after corruption springs up afresh, so by 
his power also shall the resurrection take place, and but 
once in truth, and not a second time." x It would be a 
curious inquiry whether this clear and striking statement 
of the resurrection crept into the religion of the Magians 
from the same source as the doctrine of Daniel, who lived 
in the land of the Chaldees when he wrote : " Many of 
them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake ; some 
to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting 
contempt." 2 

The belief in the immortality of the soul had slowly 
unfolded itself among the Hebrews from a very early 
period. Job and David had also foreshadowed a resurrec- 
tion of the body ; 3 but Daniel was the first to give this 
doctrine such a positive form, and after his time it was the 
commonly received belief of the Jews. 

The Apocrypha, though not entitled to the place of 
Biblical authority, is nevertheless valuable as a testimony 
to events and opinions among the Jews of its time. We 
read in the books of Maccabees 4 of one who when put to 
death exclaimed to his executioner, " Thou like a fury 
takest us out of this present life, but the King of the 
world shall raise us up, who have died for His laws, unto 
everlasting life." Again it is recorded, that after a great 
victory, Judas Maccabeus offered prayers and sacrifices for 
the dead ; upon which the historian comments, " doing 
well therein, in that he was mindful of the resurrection : 
for if he had not hoped that they that were slain should 
have risen again, it had been superfluous and vain to pray 
for the dead." 5 This testimony is complete upon the 

1 Dollinger, Judenthum und Heidenthum, i. 411. 2 Daniel xii. 2. 
3 Ps. xvi. 9 ; Job xix. 26. (?) 4 Mac. ii. 7, 14. 

6 Mac. xii. 45. 



184 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

point that the doctrine of the resurrection of the body was 
commonly held among the Jews before the time of Christ ; 
it appears distinctly in their literature of the second cen- 
tury B. C, and in the Greek version of the Apocrypha 
the literal resurrection of the body is described by the term 
(Diastasis. 

The Pharisees, who were accounted the Orthodox of the 
nation, and who represented the popular belief, held to the 
doctrine of the resurrection of the dead : while the Saddu- 
cees, a much smaller sect, regarded as heretical, denied it. 
Martha's confidence that her brother would rise again at 
the last day, shows how common was this belief among the 
Jews. 

This history of the word anastasls and of the popular 
belief in the Resurrection, has an important bearing upon 
the case in hand. That Jesus taught a doctrine of the 
Resurrection all agree ; but some say that He spoke figura- 
tively, of a spiritual renovation, or of the rising of the soul 
from the body into a higher region of life. 

But in order to know the true doctrine of Jesus we must 
ascertain the meaning of His words in the circumstances in 
which He used them. We have taken the word He used, — 
or, if He spoke in Aramaic, we have its Greek equivalent 
— anastasis, and have shown that the great masters of the 
Greek tongue before His time used this term for the raising 
up or restoring a person or thing that had fallen or was 
prostrate or helpless — the object raised up being the same 
that had fallen : we have seen that Greek writers used this 
very word to describe the revivifying a corpse, the anastasis 
of a dead body ; we have seen moreover that a belief in 
such a resurrection was extant in the world ; that the Egyp- 
tians had it dimly, the Persians of a later period perhaps 
more clearly ; that it was foreshadowed by Job and David, 
and distinctly announced by Daniel; that it became an 
article of popular belief among the Jews, and that the 



JESUS PROCLAIMED HIMSELF THE RESURRECTION. 185 

Greek-Jews in their version expressed it by the word anas- 
tasls. Thus the natural obvious meaning of this word as 
applied to a dead person is established by usage and history. 
The circumstances in which our Lord proclaimed Him- 
self the Resurrection and the Life leave no doubt that He 
had this same meaning. Lazarus was dead : that was a fact ; 
he had been sick for a good while ; so sick that his sisters 
had sent a messenger to Jesus — then some days' journey dis- 
tant — but Jesus did not come. Lazarus died ; all the 
village knew that: he was buried, and all the neighbors 
were at the funeral : he was bound hand and foot with 
grave clothes and laid in a cave, and a stone covered the 
mouth of it. When Jesus arrived Lazarus had been already 
dead four days, and for some time buried. 1 Jesus said to 
Martha, "Thy brother shall rise again." Martha said 
unto Him, " I know that he shall rise again in the resur- 
rection at the last day." She here expressed what was the 
common belief of the Jews — that at the end of the world 
the dead would be raised from their graves. Martha did 
not intend simply to assert her belief that the soul of her 
brother still lived, nor that he would rise spiritually to a 
higher state of existence ; — all this she believed ; but it 
was the bodily presence of Lazarus she so missed and longed 
for, and her faith taught her that the self-same brother 
who lay dead in the sepulchre would come to life again — 
but not till that far-distant day of the general rising of the 
dead. In answer to that faith, and to confirm it, Jesus 
said unto her, " I am the resurrection and the Life ;" the 
Resurrection is made certain in and through Me : as I am 
the Life, having in Myself the gift of life, there is vested 
in Me power to raise the dead. Therefore He would have 
her not only believe in the possibility of the Resurrection, 
and look forward to receiving back her brother in the last 

1 It was the Jewish custom to bury very soon after death. 



188 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

day, but believe in Himself as having power over death 
and the grave, and able to give back her brother by His 
word. The principle of Anastasis was in His life. After 
this Jesus went to the grave, and " cried with a loud voice 
Lazarus, come forth ; and he that was dead came forth." 
There was the anastasis — the raising up of a dead body, 
by giving it life again. The Resurrection that Martha 
believed in, that she hoped for in the far-off future, was 
made present and palpable to her senses. The event in- 
terprets the meaning of Christ. The thing done shows 
what He intended when He said " I am the Resurrection :" 
I the source and giver of life will raise the dead. 

Some will say, however, This was a miracle, like His 
own resurrection, for a particular purpose — to show forth 
His divine power and glory, — and not to be taken as 
proof of a future resurrection. But the very end for which 
the miracle was wrought was to confirm Martha's belief in 
the resurrection at the last day, by showing that Jesus had 
power to raise the dead, and would accomplish it. 

His other statements upon this doctrine confirm this 
view ; as a running commentary upon them will show. 
First we have the argument recorded by Matthew, Mark, 
and Luke, in reply to the Sadducees. This sect denied 
the common Jewish doctrine of the resurrection, and they 
thought to confound Jesus, or at least to embarrass Him 
by their famous case of the seven brothers who had mar- 
ried in turn the same wife. They put the doctrine of the 
resurrection in this bald literal form, and asked Jesus to 
dispose of their -objection. It would have met their dif- 
ficulty to have replied that the Resurrection must not be 
taken literally but figuratively and spiritually, as meaning 
the translation of the soul to a higher sphere, — for spirits 
could not be supposed to enter into a literal marriage. 
But Jesus did not take that ground : He held fast by the 
common Jewish belief of a resurrection, and declared that 



THE RESURRECTION TAUGHT IN JOHN V. 25. 187 

" in the Resurrection they neither marry nor are given in 
marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven ;" l that 
is He affirmed the resurrection of the body, but with such 
a transformation in respect of physical conditions, as will 
adapt it to the state in which angels live, a condition of 
existence in which the formal relations of this life, while 
remembered with joy, shall be no more necessary and no 
more desired. Then He went on to assert the Resurrec- 
tion as set forth by Moses in the fact that Abraham, Isaac, 
and Jacob would ever have a recognized identity in the 
kingdom of God. Thus did Jesus maintain against 
gainsayers the doctrine of a proper anastasis of the dead. 

In a discourse recorded by John 2 He makes this doc- 
trine of a bodily resurrection, if possible, even more dis- 
tinct and emphatic by contrasting it with a spiritual 
awakening from sin and its condemnation. " He that 
heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, 
hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation : 
but is passed from death unto life:" L e. "by means of 
faith he receives a principle of life which cannot be im- 
paired by death." This obviously is said of the spiritual 
life, the renovation of the soul : for it is a process now 
going forward, and its effect is seen in those who believe : 
" Verily, verily I say unto you, the hour is coming and 
now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son 
of God;" this awakening of men dead in trespasses and 
sins is now taking place : "and they that hear shall live ;" 
all who obey the gospel shall come to a new life in Christ. 

He then goes on to speak of His quickening power upon 
the literally dead; and this with reference to the final judg- 
ment. "Marvel not at this; for the hour is coming" — He 
does not here say and now is — He is looking forward to 
the last day; "in the which all" — not as before "they 
that hear " — but " all that are in their graves" and hence 

1 Matt. xxii. 30. 1 John v. 25, seq. 



188 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

literally dead, " shall hear His voice, and shall come forth, 
they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life, and 
they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damna- 
tion." 1 Now 7 whoso will hear has life spiritual ; then, all 
shall hear. Jesus is expounding His life-power as the Son 
of Man. He who now gives life to the soul by faith, will 
hereafter restore life to the body by His power. This 
covers the whole ground. Jesus Himself distinguishes 
between the spiritual and the bodily Resurrection and 
teaches both ; one now is, the other is coming. 

Again Jesus specifies particularly the spiritual life and 
the resurrection as gifts to believers. " This is the will of 
Him that sent Me ; that every one which seeth the Son 
and believeth on Him may have everlasting life ; and I 
will raise him up at the last day" 2 

Christ's doctrine of the Resurrection was illustrated and 
verified by His own resurrection. For the vague conjec- 
tures of the ancients touching the possibility of such an 
event, He substituted the certainty of the fact ; and while 
philosophy was, and ever will be, at fault concerning the 
mode of a resurrection, Jesus furnished the key to the fact 
in His proper personality. This is the feature that char- 
acterizes His doctrine, and removes it from the category of 
speculative beliefs to that of tangible facts. 

Had Jesus merely given certainty to the belief in the 
resurrection as already held by the devout among the 
Jews, this had been a contribution to faith worthy of such 
a Teacher. Had He added to this assurance of the fact 
some explanation of the manner in which so great a mar- 
vel will be effected, He would have brought philosophy as 
well as faith under the highest obligations. Had He only 
repeated the declaration made in His discourse of the true 

1 Here is named a set time for the resurrection as an event distinct from all 
moral and spiritual changes. 

2 John vi. 40. 



Christ's resurrection proves the doctrine. 18$ 

bread : " No man can come to Me, except the Father 
which hath sent Me draw him ; and I will raise him up at 
the last day;" 1 this pledge to use His -personal power in 
restoring the dead to life, would have been a satisfying 
assurance to believers, of their victory over death. But 
He went far beyond this, and centering in Himself the 
fact, the doctrine, and the assurance of this stupendous 
miracle, He said, " I am the Resurrection and the Life," 
both are linked together, both emanate from Me, both 
center in Me; the Resurrection is Life in victory over 
death ; and the Resurrection that rescues from death unto 
life again shall issue in the Life Everlasting. 

What a wealth of meaning is hidden in those words ! 
Jesus had said to Martha, " Thy brother shall rise again." 
By this assurance He sought to test her faith in the resur- 
rection as held by the Jews, without, as yet, announcing 
His intention to restore Lazarus to life. For this she 
must be prepared through the development of her faith in 
the possibility of a resurrection ; and this belief Jesus made 
definite and positive, by making it individual, and meeting 
that question of personal identity which the heart yearns 
over by every open grave. "Thy brother shall rise 
again ;" rise as thy brother to be known and loved. " I 
Jenoiv" said the half-believing, half-wondering woman, 
" that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last 
day :" but that is a long, long way off, and by his grave it 
seems so distant, so strange, so misty, that faith almost 
loses its hold upon it ; and in wondering how it can be, I 
hardly keep the confidence that it shall be, — the resurrec- 
tion — what f how is it ? — at the last day — when shall that 
be? Then said Jesus, "I am the resurrection and the 
life ; he that belie veth in Me, though he were dead, yet 
shall he live." The creative power that gave life at the 
first proceeded from Me ; the power of resurrection that 

1 John vi. 44. 



19 J THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

shall bring back life from the grave centers in Me ; and it 
needs only that you believe in ME, and distance and im- 
possibility vanish in presence of the Life. 

" I am the Resurrection." This announcement makes 
real and positive that which had before been a matter of 
speculative faith. What life is we know no better than 
before ; but we do know whence life comes, and who im- 
parts it. How life can be renewed in dead, buried and 
perished clay we do not know, any more than we know 
how life is given to the new-born babe or to the seed long 
buried under ground ; but we do know who can give life 
to the dead and make that life indissoluble and perpetual. 
Instead of speculating how this thing can be, or searching 
after a principle, law, or process through which it can be 
accomplished, we look upon a person who can cause it to 
be, and who centers it in Himself as a reality. The Re- 
surrection is not merely an event, it is a power ; it is life 
reviving and asserting itself again where death had for a 
time suspended its manifestations ; and this Life is not 
simply a fact, a phenomenon, it inheres in a Person and 
proceeds from a Person, so that He not only gives life, 
but is the life that He gives — He imparts somewhat of 
that which characterizes and constitutes Himself; He not 
only causes the resurrection to come to pass in another, 
He is the Resurrection, and as He raised himself by His 
own energy, so He enters by His own life-energy into the 
sleeping dust and raises that. The resurrection is but the 
application of life to that which had been dead, and He is 
the life. " As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath 
He given to the Son to have life in Himself; " 1 — a life 
that sustains itself, and can impart life to others ; and so 
" The Son quickeneth whom He will." 2 The life is the 
quickening power ; the raising up is but one mode of ex- 
ercising that power upon a passive subject. And when 

1 Jobn v. 26. 2 John v. 21. 



RAISING OF LAZARUS. 191 

we have formed the idea of one who has life in Himself 
the resurrection ceases to be so great a marvel ; it is no 
greater marvel than the first creation, or the original 
giving of life to any creature ; the Life is the real wonder. 

The declaration of Christ that He is the Resurrection 
was borne out by two marvellous acts of life-power — first 
the raising of Lazarus, and second the raising up of His 
own body. Twice before He had raised the dead : — the 
daughter of Jairus from the bed on which she died, the 
son of the widow from the bier on which he was being 
carried out of the gates of Nain. The knowledge of these 
and of other miracles of Christ upon infirmities and 
diseases of the body, had led Martha to feel and say, 
"Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died," 
and had encouraged her half-formed hope ; u , , / that 
even now whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will give 
it Thee." How feeble, unformed, unreal that hope was 
appeared in her remonstrating at the grave against remov- 
ing the stone, because Lazarus had been dead four days 
and must have fallen into corruption — so does intensity of 
grief vibrate between hope and despair. Jesus had sought 
to educate her to the point of implicit faith in Himself; 
and the circumstantiality of these details prepared the way 
for this crowning lesson. Let us recapitulate the inci- 
dents. 

We know that Lazarus was dead ; that he was buried ; 
that his friends were mourning him ; that he had been 
dead four days ; that the sister who so yearned after him 
that she almost hoped for his recall, was yet unwilling 
that his grave should be disturbed ; and when under these 
conditions of seeming impossibility, Jesus standing by the 
grave cried, " Lazarus come forth," and " He that was 
dead came forth bound hand and foot with grave clothes, 
and the napkin yet tied about his face," — as if startled 
from a sleep — we feel that He who spake was the Resur- 



192 THE THEOLOGY OF CHKIST. 

rection and the life. Lazarus was raised, but Jesus was 
the Resurrection ; the wonder of the Power is greater far 
than the wonder that it wrought. The people who heard 
of the miracle made this distinction. Multitudes resorted 
to Bethany from curiosity, that they might see Lazarus ; 
but their wonder and faith were turned from the man who 
had been raised from the dead to the Man who had raised 
him ; and so many became His disciples that the chief 
priests " consulted that they might put Lazarus also to 
death ; because that by reason of him many of the Jews 
went away and believed on Jesus : " — so much greater was 
the author of the resurrection than the event itself. 

But above all, Jesus showed that He was the Resurrec- 
tion by raising Himself from the dead. As, to the com- 
mon people, the bringing up of Lazarus from the grave 
where he had lain four days seemed a greater marvel than 
raising the young man from his bier at JNain, so the rais- 
ing Himself seemed a yet greater wonder than to raise 
another. There were two reasons for this ; First, upon the 
cross Jesus had succumbed to death ; and by thus yielding 
in His own person to the enemy from whom He had res- 
cued Lazarus, He had seemed to vacate His power or 
prerogative of life. In the presence of a vast concourse of 
approving spectators, He had been nailed to the cross and 
lifted up : He had expired of exhaustion and agony : the 
executioners on guard had pronounced Him dead; a 
soldier had thrust a spear into His heart : and His death 
being certified, by the authority of the governor, He had 
been taken down from the cross by His sorrowing dis- 
ciples, buried in a new tomb, and the stone sealed and a 
guard set over it. Thus whatever power of resisting and 
overcoming death Jesus had shown in healing the sick 
and recalling the dead, seemed to have forsaken Him in 
His own extremity. Therefore that He should rise again 
was the greater marvel. 



MIRACLE OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 193 

And there was a second reason for this, in the fact that 
death seemed to separate from Him that mysterious power 
by which He had restored others from death. When 
Jesus brought back Lazarus to life, He invoked His 
Father ; He put forth His own will ; He used some energy 
or efficiency residing in Himself: He was the power that 
acted upon another. But now He was undoubtedly dead 
— a lifeless body laid away in the tomb — with no power 
of motion or of feeling, and no symptom of vitality. That 
spirit-power that had broken the hold of death upon 
Lazarus, to human view had utterly departed when on the 
cross He yielded up the ghost. It seemed therefore a 
greater miracle that He should raise Himself than that He 
had raised another. And when on the third day He stood 
in the midst of His disciples, the same Jesus with the print 
of the nails in His hands and His feet, and the marks of 
the wound in His side, this was the sublime, the invinci- 
ble testimony that He, in, by, and of Himself, was the 
Resurrection and the Life. This it is that gives to the 
Christian faith in the Resurrection the freshness and life 
that always attach to a Person ; this is not an abstract 
dogma, nor a theory that might tantalize and bewilder but 
could never satisfy ; — it is confidence in a Person who has 
done in and for Himself that which He promises to do for 
every disciple. 

" He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall 
he live." l This saying applied to Lazarus in the first in- 
stance, as a type of true believers who had died before the 
redeeming work of Christ was wrought out to its visible 
completion. Although Christ had not been revealed to 
such as the giver of life from the dead, nevertheless they 
having had that spiritual faith which is the key to all 
restoration, shall partake of this benefit of Christ's coming: 
such an one, though like Lazarus he have died without the 

1 John xi. 25. 
18 



194 THE THEOLOGY OE CHRIST . 

demonstration of the resurrection that I will give in My 
person, yet shall he live — come to life again through Me : 
and this promise, as affecting believers who had already 
died, was at once confirmed by bringing up Lazarus from 
the dead. 

But there followed a far-reaching, all-embracing promise 
for believers from among all coming generations of men ; 
" Whosoever liveth, and believedi in Me, shall never die." T 
This declaration has so staggered some in its literalness 
that they have construed it of spiritual living and dying 
— the life of the soul, in its felicity being secured by faith 
in Christ as its Redeemer. But there is nothing in the 
construction to indicate a change from a literal resur- 
rection in the first clause of the sentence, to a spiritual life 
in the second ; and if we take this last saying as meaning 
a spiritual life, must we not follow Swedenborg in spirit- 
ualizing the resurrection also ? But our Lord applied and 
confirmed His declaration by raising Lazarus from the grave, 
thus showing that He was speaking throughout of a physi- 
cal, literal resurrection, a coming back to life with personal 
identity. 

Others have understood Him to refer to believers who 
shall be living on the earth at the time of His coming, — 
concerning whom it was a current belief that they shall be 
glorified or transfigured, without the process of dying. 
But it seems a straining of the sense to carry it forward to 
that distant future, when there is nothing in the context 
that refers to the end of the world. 

Christ made a promise of universal application to those 
that should believe in Him. He had just spoken of true 
believers who were already dead ; these He would redeem 
from the possession of death, and they as to their persons 
shall live again. He then spoke of all living disciples ; 
all that then were, and all who should afterwards become 

i John xi. 26. 



NO DEATH FOR THE BELIEVER. 195 

disciples : " Whosoever liveth ;" every believer who is yet 
living shall be exempt from death through faith in Me. 
The interpretation lies in the meaning and effect of death 
as changed by Christ's coming and by faith in Him. " He 
that believeth shall never die;" for 

(a). To the believer in Christ death has no power of evil 
either through fear or through suffering. All mental dis- 
quietude is removed, and death as a process of nature 
taking effect in the body, is a falling asleep, a rest. 

(b). The process of dying liberates the spirit from its 
mortal appendages, that it may enter upon felicity unquali- 
fied and unending. The physiological process of dying is 
the enfranchisement of the spirit, a triumph of the life- 
principle over that which is mortal. Life in this stage of 
existence is a perpetual struggle with opposing forces ; the 
elements that compose our bodies tend continually to dis- 
solution and decay. Even when no disease invades, and 
no accident threatens, there is a constant waste of tissue 
that calls for incessant repairs ; and in the healthiest condi- 
tion, how is the hidden vitality that we feel throbbing and 
yearning within us, hampered by physical conditions or 
fatigue. But Christ has taught that death is the liberation 
and expansion of the life. It is the mortal that dies ; the 
spirit lives ; and, moreover, shall never die — death has no 
more dominion. The believer will be restored from the pos- 
session of death as to the body, raised up and glorified, so 
that death in the sense of destruction shall never be accom- 
plished upon anything that pertained to him. Here the ques- 
tion of time is nothing upon the scale of the infinite future. 

How grand the scope given to Christ's work of re- 
demption by His doctrine of the Resurrection ! For that 
work the Son of God came into the world where sin had 
reigned through all the generations of men ; entered into 
that humanity which sin had made its own ; redeemed and 
sanctified this; went into personal conflict with Satan in the 



196 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

field of his most successful temptations, and openly tri- 
umphed over him ; invaded the realm of darkness and cast 
out devils by His word; went down into the grave to meet 
death in the field of his unbroken possession, and there 
trampled under foot death, the grave, and Hades, and rose 
in the might of victory. Sending forth His Spirit, He has 
continued the triumphs of redemption in the world of 
human thought and will, and He shall come once more to 
perfect His victory by redeeming the body from the grave. 
All earth and time form one grand symphony of redemption. 
The world is yet in the andante movement, but a melody 
of hope runs through the solemn tones, and the time is 
already quickening ; the final movement shall open with 
the trump that wakes the dead, and with hallelujahs that 
sweep the skies. 

Hence the Christian faith is a finality in religion; 
in respect of the restoration of man, his development, his 
blessedness, it leaves nothing to be desired, nothing to be 
thought of. It redeems man from sin, and will lead him 
to perfection of character; it fortifies him against trial 
and makes him the conqueror of death ; it recovers him 
from the grave and clothes him with a spiritual and glo- 
rious body like unto Christ's ; it introduces him to fellow- 
ship with God and the society of all the holy and bless- 
ed. Thus linking man to the spiritual and eternal life, 
the Christian faith gives dignity to his present and glory to 
his future. The necessities of man's present condition bind 
him much to the material things around him, while it is 
the tendency of his appetites and passions to seek their grat- 
ification in the earthly and sensual. Yet he is conscious of 
intellectual wants, of spiritual yearnings and aptitudes that 
show his affinity for a higher life. These the Christian 
faith meets with its twin doctrines of redemption and resur- 
rection. Redemption delivers the spirit while yet in the 
body, from the dominion of the flesh, so that believers are 



THE CHRISTIAN FAITH A FINALITY. 197 

no longer " of the world." 1 Resurrection asserts the final 
dominion of the spirit in the body itself; He that believeth, 
by that act of faith is born again, and by virtue of this 
life he shall never die. 

1 John xv. 19 ; xvii. 14. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE FINAL JUDGMENT. 

To the power of Resurrection Jesus linked the preroga- 
tive of Judgment. The same Son whose spirit now quick- 
eneth the soul to a new and everlasting life, and whose 
voice shall hereafter quicken all the dead, will come to 
judge the world ; for the Father " hath given Him au- 
thority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of 
Man." x 

In His life-time Jesus declined to act as judge in cases 
brought to Him, 2 and He disavowed any judicial purpose 
in His mission; "For God sent not His Son into the 
world to condemn the world, but that the world through 
Him might be saved." 3 The ruling purpose in the mission 
of Christ was to deliver man from condemnation — for " He 
that believeth on Him is not condemned," — no longer 
lies under judicial condemnation as a sinner, and shall not 
hereafter fall under penalty : — " Verily, verily I say unto 
you, he that heareth my word and believeth on Him that 
sent Me hath everlasting life ; and shall not come into 
condemnation ; but is passed from death unto life." 4 
Even to those who openly rejected Him, Jesus said, " If 
any man hear my words and believe not, I judge him not ; 
for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world." 5 

The purpose of Christ's mission was salvation, and the 
whole tone of His life was as far as possible removed from 
the spirit of judgment. But although Jesus so emphati- 
cally disavowed both the act and the spirit of judgment in 

1 John v. 27. 2 Luke xii. 14. 3 John Hi. 17. 

4 John v. 24. 5 John xii. 47. 

198 



THE JUDGMENT PUBLIC AND FORMAL. 199 

His personal life upon earth, He as distinctly proclaimed 
Himself the judge of mankind, and His purpose of coming 
again in that character, at the end of the world. " When 
the Son of man shall come in His glory and all the holy 
angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His 
glory ; and before Him shall be gathered all nations ; and 
He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd 
divideth his sheep from the goats ; and He shall set the 
sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left." * 

This scene represents a public and general judgment, at 
a fixed time, presided over in person by the Son of Man, 
whose decisions will finally determine the condition of all 
mankind according to character. Other declarations set 
forth a special fitness in the designation of Christ to the 
office of judge, " because He is the Son of man." 2 These 
several points cover the teaching of Jesus upon the mo- 
mentous doctrine of the final judgment. In the scheme of 
Redemption proclaimed by Christ, the Judgment is kept 
ever in view, as a motive for accepting the Gospel, as a 
warning against rejecting it, as the fitting termination of 
the great drama of human life, and the final vindication of 
the righteousness and the authority of God before the uni- 
verse — an event of everlasting moment to the moral his- 
tory of our race and to the government of God. Hence all 
that can be known concerning the Judgment from the lips 
of the Son of Man, has a direct bearing upon every indi- 
vidual not only in his relations to that distant future, but 
in his present personal relations to Christ and the Gospel. 

First. It was taught by Christ that there will be a 
"public and formal act of judgment concerning every indivi- 
dual of our race. There have been attempts to explain 
away His teaching in this particular. They who deny 
that the Resurrection signifies the raising of the body with 
a substantial identity, though with refined adaptations to a 

1 Matt. xxv. 31. 2 John v. 27. 



200 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

spiritual life — who would make of the Anastasls nothing 
more than a moral renovation here, and the liberation of 
the soul by death into a higher spiritual life, — equally 
deny a formal declarative Judgment, and would make the 
judgment consist in the division of character effected by 
Christ's word in this life, and in the natural progress of 
the soul into a corresponding condition after death : in 
other words, such interpreters hold, that the judgment 
begins in this world in the separation of good and evil 
which the word of God pronounces and the course of Pro- 
vidence effects, and then that this goes on, as a natural law 
of progress, into the future world, there keeping separate 
the good and the evil from the moment of death. Thus 
death itself becomes, as it were, an event of a judicial and 
retributive character; and there is no need of further judg- 
ment. 

Beyond a question these ideas of Judgment are not only 
founded in Reason and in Nature, but are brought out in 
the teachings of Christ. But in addition to these obvious 
and natural processes of judgment, He taught that there 
will be a positive act of Judgment proceeding from Him- 
self in a formal and conspicuous manner. His word truly 
does judge men day by day. This Jesus Himself stated to 
be an inevitable consequence of His own preaching, 
though He had not come into the world for the purpose 
of judgment. The clear strong light of truth as He pre- 
sented it, made more palpable the darkness of sin and un- 
belief, and the perversity and wickedness of such as would 
not come to the light. This is the condemnation, the 
xpitTcc, the separation, the decisive event, the turning point 
of character — "that light is come into the world, and men 
loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were 
evil." 1 Hence while he who believes on the Son of God 
and comes to the light is freed from condemnation, " he 

l John iii, 19, 



201 

that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath 
not believed in the Name of the only begotten Son of 
God." x This process of moral judgment, making plain 
distinctions of character by the test of truth, is going on 
continually and necessarily, as often as the Gospel is 
preached. It is a judgment that no man can escape : the 
Truth pronounces it by shining over against his character 
and life, and the man pronounces it upon himself by his 
own deportment toward the Truth. There comes a new 
krisis to every soul so often as it confronts the word of 
Christ. Every word of His Truth judges the soul and 
compels the soul to judge itself. When Christ says " Be 
ye perfect as your Father," His word judges us as sinful. 
When He says " Repent and believe the Gospel," His 
word judges our impenitence and unbelief; the light makes 
the shadows stand out. When He teaches us to pray, His 
word condemns a prayerless life. When He commands us 
to love God with all the heart, He judges our love of 
self and the world. 

As with the word of Jesus, so also with His life. The 
manifestation that Jesus made of perfect holiness and of 
divine power and glory, brought into bolder relief the sin- 
fulness of those that rejected Him, and showed that what- 
ever their pretensions to piety they were radically defective 
at heart; for in refusing His teachings and rejecting the 
evidences of His divine purity and power, they showed 
that in heart they had really no love for holiness nor for 
God. " If I had not come and spoken unto them, they 
had not had sin." Their aversion to what is truly goo 1 
and divine would not have stood out as it then did in their 
consciousness and to the view of others, and because of 
ignorance they would have been less culpable ; " but now 
they have no cloak for their sin." 2 "If I had not done 
among them the works which none other man did, thev 

1 John rii. 18. 2 John xv. 22. 



202 THE THEOLOGY OF CHKIST. 

had not had sin ; " l had not Christ appeared with His 
wonderful works of divine power and love attesting the 
truth, there had been some comparative excuse for men 
living in ignorance and unbelief: " But now have they 
both seen and hated both Me and my Father." The same 
principle of judgment was again enunciated to the Phari- 
sees who sought to condemn Jesus for giving sight to a 
blind man on the Sabbath day. They professed to have 
the true law of religion and refused to be convinced by the 
miracle. Jesus said, " For judgment I am come into this 
world, that they which see not might see ; and they which 
see might be made blind." 2 His coming into the world, 
His being in the world, by the normal effect of light and 
truth made a judicial discrimination among men as to the 
honesty of their feelings and the sincerity of their profes- 
sions toward Truth and God. " If ye were blind, ye could 
have no sin ; but now ye say We see, therefore your sin 
remaineth." 3 This judicial process — a judgment in fact 
though not inform — a moral judgment, goes forward day 
by day. 

Men profess a regard for principle, for morality, for re- 
ligion, — pride themselves upon their virtues ; — yet when 
Christ appears before them the embodiment of every virtue, 
the manifestation of true goodness, the exponent of true re- 
ligion, they render Him no homage, give Him no love, fol- 
low Him with no obedience, and so by His Presence their 
pretensions are judged. But this searching, discriminating 
effect of truth and holiness was not the whole of the judg- 
ment meant by Christ, as is plain from His own words; for 
He teaches that the self-same Truth which now reveals 
the characters of men and so far judges them, will also judge 
them hereafter. " He that rejecteth Me and receiveth not 
my words, hath One that judgeth him ; the word that I 
have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last dayT 4 

i John xv. 24. 2 John ix. 39. 3 John ix. 41. 4 John xii. 48. 



A SEPARATION OF GOOD AND EVIL AT DEATH. 203 

The notion of a judgment immediately after death, a 
judgment which consists simply in allotting the spirit, as 
by a law of its own being, to a condition corresponding to 
its moral state, finds some warrant in our Lord's parable of 
Dives and Lazarus. There Lazarus is pictured in a state 
of felicity after death, reposing " in Abraham's bosom/' 
and Dives in a place of torment, whose pains he endures 
while his five brethren are yet alive in this world. This 
parable clearly teaches these two things — that immediately 
after death the soul is found existing in a state of con- 
sciousness ; and that in the state next following upon death, 
there is a wide distinction in the conditions of the departed 
which answers to the differences in their characters in this 
world. This is virtually a judgment; whether we regard 
it as the formal act of God, or the working out in their 
natural effects upon the frames and feelings of the soul of 
the dispositions formed and the habits indulged in the pre- 
sent life. To the extent of separating the good and the 
bad into distinct abodes of happiness and misery, the effect 
of death is judicial and retributive. What the very laws 
of nature in respect of all tendencies and developments, 
and the laws of the human mind in respect of memory, 
association, and conscience so obviously teach, is herein the 
law of God, and the rewards and punishments which take 
effect directly after death are of the nature of a judgment 
upon each soul in particular. 

But in addition to this our Lord has set before us the 
picture of a public and formal judgment at which He will 
preside, and pronounce judgment in person. "The Son of 
Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with 
Him ; and He shall sit upon the throne of His glory." 
Now it is true that great providential judgments in the 
course of human history were sometimes prefigured by 
Christ as the coming of the Son of Man. Such was the 
destruction of Jerusalem, and the final subversion of the 



204 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

Jewish polity and faith, concerning which Jesus said: 
" Then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaveu ; 
and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they 
shall see the Son of Man coining in the clouds of heaven 
with power and great glory." l There were no supernatural 
portents of that event; its immediate effects were limited to 
a small territory, and after Titus had wiped out the capital 
of a rebellious province, the aifairs of the world went on as 
before; yet in its moral bearings upon the kingdom of 
God, this was one of the great way-marks of human his- 
tory. And this pictorial " coming " of the Son of Man is 
used only of certain signal and majestic events in history 
which the minds of men instinctively recognize as the judg- 
ments of God. The grandeur of the event in its moral 
relations justifies the boldness of the figure. 

Again, the event of death is sometimes spoken of under 
the figure of a master coming to reckon with his ser- 
vants ; 2 for to each individual the time of death is the 
winding up of his earthly aifairs, and a summons from his 
Lord to render up his account. But to represent the com- 
mon event of mortality that occurs at every moment of 
every day as the coming of Christ with great power and 
glory, with His holy angels, the sounding of a trumpet and 
the setting up a throne, would be a rhetorical extravagance 
that no Biblical writer ever dreamed of. And however 
each individual may be practically judged at death, such a 
description as our Lord has given of His own coming in 
the character of Judge can mean nothing less than a public 
and formal act of judgment. 

In the same language He teaches that this judgment will 
be universal in respect of the human race. " Before Him 
^hall be gathered all nations" 3 — all the families of men in 
all their generations. This positive, formal and universal 

1 Matt. xxiv. 30. 2 Matt. xxv. 19. 3 Matt. xxv. 32. 



THE JUDGMENT UNIVERSAL. 205 

judgment is most clearly set. forth in the following words : 
" The Father hath given Him authority to execute judg- 
ment, because He is the Son of Man. 1 Marvel not at 
this," said Jesus, and entering somewhat into detail, He 
proceeded to describe what manner of judgment this shall 
j )e . — no t a judgment in this life, separating His friends 
from His enemies : not a judging of souls one by one, by 
assigning them their portion at death ; but a simultaneous 
judging of all mankind, to follow upon the Eesurrection — 
" The hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves 
shall hear His voice :" 2 that voice is elsewhere likened to 
the sounding of a trumpet, the signal for decampment, 
which wakes the sleepers for a battle or a march — " the 
intimation of some grand catastrophe " at hand ; " all 
that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come 
forth : they that have done good, unto the resurrection of 
life, and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of 
damnation." 3 Thus mankind will be judged as in the 
body for the deeds done in the body. God's dealings with 
men in this world will then be unveiled in a convincing 
revelation of His righteousness. The interlaced influences 
of society will then be untwined, and each character be 
brought out according to its deserts. " For there is nothing 
covered that shall not be revealed : neither hid that shall 
not be known. Therefore, whatsoever ye have spoken in 
darkness, shall be heard in the light ; and that which ye 
have spoken in the ear in closets, shall be proclaimed upon 
the house-tops." 4 How much greater moment will the 
public exposition of character, followed by appropriate 
awards, impart to the judicial verdict of the divine govern- 
ment, than would the silent dropping of each individual at 
death into his appointed place ! 

Christ taught further that there will be a set time for 

1 John v. 27. 2 John v. 28. 8 John v. 28, 29. * Luke xii. 3. 



206 THE THEOLOGY OF CHEIST. 

this general judgment This belongs to the very idea of it 
as public and universal. 

In the order of events Christ placed the Judgment after 
the Resurrection. He spoke of it as that day, — an ex- 
pression which in New Testament usage denotes the closing 
up of this dispensation and the ushering in of a new order 
of things. There is something that awakens awe in this 
emphatic designation of " that Day :" — " Of thai Day and 
hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven ; V1 "It 
shall be more tolerable in that Day for Sodom than for 
Chorazin ;" 2 " Take heed to yourselves lest that Day come 
upon you unawares ;" 3 — a Day selected, marked, appointed, 
a Day which like the first day of creation, the day of the 
crucifixion, the day of the Lord's resurrection, shall be re- 
membered when all other days of human history are for- 
gotten. For this shall mark indelibly the calendar of our 
race, as it passes over from the doings of time into the issues 
of eternity — a Day so grand, so bright, so glorious, so 
terrible, that in all the ages after it shall be remembered as 
That Day ! 

Christ announced the judgment to follow the end of the 
world. " In the end of the world, the Son of Man shall 
send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His 
kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, 
and shall cast them into a furnace of fire;" 4 and again He 
said, " At the end of the world the angels shall come forth, 
and sever the wicked from among the just." 5 

To sum up the doctrine of Jesus concerning the Judg- 
ment ; at a fixed period in the future, marking so high and 
solemn an occasion as " that Day," at the close of the present 
order of things, the end of the world, and after the resur- 
rection, there will be a public and general judgment of 
mankind which shall finally divide them into two great 

1 Mat. xxiv. 36. 2 Luke x. 12. 3 Luke xxi. 34. 

4 Mat. xiii. 41, 42. 5 x iii. 49. 



OUR HUMANITY IN THE JUDGE. 207 

classes, and shall apportion these according to their charac- 
ter, to a state of happiness or a state of misery. It will be 
a crowning characteristic of the Judgment that the Lord 
Jesus in person, as the Son of Man, will preside at that 
august solemnity, and will utter the decisions that shall fix 
forever the destiny of each and all of mankind. The 
Son of Man shall come in His glory, and shall sit upon 
the throne of His glory : all nations shall be gathered be- 
fore Him for their final award : He shall separate them 
one from another ; He shall set the sheep on His right hand, 
but the goats on the left. 1 The judging shall be His; 
the decision shall be His ; the welcome to the righteous, 
the sentence upon the wicked shall proceed from His lips : — 
"The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judg- 
ment unto the Son." 2 

The Humanity of Christ is made prominent in this refer- 
ence to the judgment, as His Divinity was made prominent 
in reference to the resurrection. The dead shall hear the 
voice of " the Son of God " — the divine power and majesty 
will be most strikingly expressed through the voice that 
shall raise the dead; but "the Son of Man," our represent- 
ative and glorified humanity in Christ, shall come into 
view in the solemnities of the judgment. It is easy to 
imagine the moral significance of this exaltation of the 
Christ as the Judge. His personal connection with human- 
ity, JJis experience of its trials and temptations, His sympa- 
thy with its sufferings and sorrows, will throw an air of 
benignity and tenderness over a scene that must of itself 
possess so much of majesty and awe. As one has said, 
"Man shall be judged by his fellow, by the most gracious 
and the meekest man, by man who hath borne the sins of 
mankind, and can have compassion upon his brethren — so 
that it is Mercy itself that judgeth." — One mav well con- 
ceive that the same sympathetic experience with our human- 

1 Mat. xxv. 33. 2 John v. 22. 



208 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

ity that qualified J esus to be " a merciful and faithful High 
Priest/' would have some corresponding relation to His 
office as Judge, bringing Him near to the arraigned in a 
compassionate consideration of ignorance and infirmi- 
ties. 

Moreover, as the truth of Jesus was the closest test of 
character, the life of Jesus the perfect model of humanity, 
the death of Jesus the highest expression of love, it is fit- 
ting that they who have had knowledge of Him should 
be brought to trial at the last before Him, and be judged 
by their feelings and actions toward Himself. Surely 
every complaint or even suspicion of severity must be 
silenced, when He who showed His anxiety to save men 
by dying for them, and who promised forgiveness to them 
that hated Him, shall remand unto condemnation for their 
sins those who would not come unto Him that they might 
have life. l Their sinful unbelief will itself be their con- 
demnation, in the light of the character and mission of 
Christ, and especially in the light of the mercy that has 
saved others and would equally have saved them. 2 There 
will be a fitness also in the judgment being rendered by 
Him who as the Messiah appeared on earth to manifest 
and perfect the kingdom of God in opposition to the king- 
dom of darkness and evil. The judicial function of 
Christ will set forth His divine royalty. 3 

Back of all these considerations, as exalting and enforc- 
ing them, is the fact that God was revealed to men in His 
paternal love and grace through the Incarnation of Christ. 
It was through our human nature as the medium, that 
Jehovah manifested Himself to men as the Father ; and so 
wondrously was the love of God in giving His Son to 
save the world identified with the grace of Christ in being 
" lifted up " for that end, so entirely were the thoughts and 

1 John viii. 21, 24. 2 Matt. xi. 20-25. 3 Matt. xxv. 34. 



THE INCARNATION A REVELATION. 209 

purposes of the Father reflected in the Son, that Jesus 
could say "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." l 
The being and attributes of God had been matter of 
devout contemplation in the creation; had been to phil- 
osophic minds a subject of speculative thought ; had been 
impressed upon the Jewish people by occasional appear- 
ances of celestial glory, and special acts of divine power ; 
but when Christ came, men saw this power over nature, 
over diseases, over the dead, over the world of spirits, pro- 
ceeding from a personal will, and so felt the presence of 
God as a living, acting personality; they saw this power 
put forth for most beneficent ends ; and so, that goodness 
which they had inferred from creation and providence, 
they saw to be the living activity of the love of God : the 
truth which they had spelled out upon the pages of nature 
and of the human mind, or heard from the lips of pro- 
phets, they now heard in the clearness, the fulness, the 
majesty of the voice of God. That holiness which Reason 
and Revelation had alike proclaimed as the sum of the 
divine character, and conscience and the word of God had 
required as the condition of divine favor, they saw before 
them, a living example, in Him who was without sin, 
and full of every grace : — but most of all, that mercy, 
which nature but obscurely hinted, and reason hardly 
dared to guess, and the law had only shadowed through 
its sacrifices, was here manifested in words of tenderness 
and compassion, in the offer of salvation, and in the for- 
giveness of sins : it was in view of this intelligible and 
completed exhibition of the character of God, that Jesus 
said, " He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father" 

The Incarnation was the most stupendous moral pheno- 
menon in the history of this world, and so far as we can 
imagine, in the history of the universe. The physical fact 

1 John xiv. 9. 
14 



210 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

of the Incarnation was the least part of the miracle : for, 
that the Creator of all substances and forms could adapt 
Himself to any, were no marvel. But the purpose of the 
Incarnation is the moral wonder of earth and heaven, — 
that God entered into humanity to redeem, ennoble, en- 
throne it : and this sublime wonder of the Incarnation will 
stand out in Jesus the appointed Judge, because He is the 
Son of Man. In that Day when all nations shall be 
gathered before Him, the surpassing wonder shall be the 
unveiling of that awful mystery, the Incarnate God, the 
Redeeming Man ; all angels His servants ; principalities, 
powers, and dominions gathered beneath His throne ! 



CHAPTER XVL 

THE BLESSEDNESS OF THE SAINTS. 

In the dramatic representation of the Judgment recorded 
by Matthew, the scene opens with words of congratulation 
from the enthroned Son of Man to His loyal and faithful 
disciples: "Then shall the King say unto them on His 
right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the 
kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the 
world." l A state of eternal felicity awaits the close of the 
believer's life as its appropriate consummation. " He that 
believeth on Me hath everlasting life/' 2 — the life of faith 
sustained upon earth by the " bread of God," at death will 
emerge from all the limitations of the flesh into the life of 
perfect satisfaction in heaven ; — a continuous Life — here 
an immanent principle, there an immanent Power " equal 
unto the angels ; " 3 " He that eateth of this bread shall 
live forever." 4 This promise of a perfected and glorified 
life with Himself our Lord associated with the commemo- 
rative supper, embodying it with the most expressive 
symbol of His love, that as often as we remember Him in 
His death, we may revive the assurance that we shall be 
with Him in His glory. The sacrament which He insti- 
tuted at the first as a memorial, He declared also to be a 
prophecy ; jt was designed to link together in the thought 
of 'His disciples His departure and His coming; to connect 
His dying upon the cross with their living forever in the 
kingdom of His Father. In the anguish of parting He 
said to His disciples " Believe in Me ; I go to prepare a 
place for you ; and if I go and prepare a place for you, I 

* Matt. xxv. 34. 2 j h n vi. 47. 3 Luke xx. 36. * John vi. 58. 

211 



212 THE THEOLOGY OP* CHRIST. 

will come again, and receive you unto Myself, that where 
I am, there ye may be also." l And the going and the 
coming He linked together in this prophetical memorial — 
the memorial " This d9 in remembrance of Me," 2 the pro- 
pheey, " I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine 
until that day when I drink it new with you in My 
Father's kingdom." 3 

To drink together of the wine-cup at the Table signifies 
social communion — participation in a common festival of 
love : the promise of Jesus that He will hereafter drink 
of the same cup with His disciples, is an assurance that 
they shall then be admitted to a visible fellowship and en- 
joyment with their Lord — that He who is now felt to be 
present at this sacrament, through the spiritual perception of 
faith, will then be seen in the midst of His Redeemed, 
welcoming them as His brethren, and diffusing over them 
the glory of His presence and the joy of His own blessedness. 

The sphere of this joyous communion will be the perfect- 
ed state of the Redeemed in heaven. "In my Father's 
kingdom," was the time and place indicated by our Lord 
for the fulfilling of this promise. The " kingdom of heaven," 
the " kingdom of God," as we have seen, 4 began to be mani- 
fested upon earth when souls, brought into a personal 
allegiance to Truth and Holiness, were united in a fellow- 
ship of spiritual love and obedience to their common Lord. 
Wherever such souls are found there is the kingdom of 
heaven already within them : and wherever such souls are 
joined together in some visible bond of recognition and 
fellowship, there is the kingdom of heaven made manifest. 
As yet, however, the kingdom of heaven is but imperfectly 
established in respect of its authority in the hearts of those 
who have received it, and imperfectly manifested through 
any communion of Christians by which it is represented to 

1 John xiv. 1-4. 2 Luke xxii. 19. s Matt. xxvi. 29. 

4 Chap. iii. 



THE KINGDOM MADE PERFECT. 213 

the world. The kingdom in its highest sense — as de- 
noting the perfect rule of the divine will in a perfect com- 
munity — will not appear until the final coming of the 
Son of Man. 

It is of a time after the end of the world, after death, 
and the resurrection and the judgment — the time when 
" the Son of man shall send forth his angels to gather out 
of His kingdom all things that offend " 1 — that Jesus has 
declared, " Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun 
in the kingdom of their Father." 2 The Master of the 
house shall " thrust out all workers of iniquity," separat- 
ing the false from the true, and then shall Abraham, and 
Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets abide in the king- 
dom of God 3 — in a state of purity and felicity that no sin 
nor trouble shall ever invade : the kingdom of God puri- 
fied of all the accidents of evil that have attached them- 
selves to its external development in this world, shall then 
stand forth in its essential beauty and glory. That state 
of perfected character and beatified existence which the 
Scriptures describe as Heaven, our Lord here styles His 
Father's kingdom. It will be the crowning honor and 
felicity of the saints in heaven, that the Lord Jesus will 
then make Himself known as their friend and companion, 
receiving them into a personal fellowship, and sharing 
with them as at a high festival, His peculiar glory as the 
Son of Man. In that richness of immediate personal in- 
tercourse, in that fulness of love made visible by the shar- 
ing of all its gifts, will Jesus fulfill His parting word to 
His disciples, " I will drink new wine with you in my 
Father's kingdom." 

The cup of communion at that feast will have a new 
flavor, and will sparkle with fresh delights — a flavor that 
will not as now reach the soul through the senses, but 
shall convey direct from soul to soul the very essence of 

i Matt. xiii. 41 . 2 Matt. xiii. 43. 3 Luke xiii. 25, 30. 



214 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST, 

love and bliss ; — the wine of life pressed from immortal 
fruits, and imparting the purity, tone, and freshness of 
celestial joy. It will be a " new " and more exalted mode 
of spiritual intercourse ; — where now this cup, as a symbol, 
addresses the imagination and helps us to conceive of Jesus 
as spiritually communing with us, there Jesus will give us 
in His own person the tokens of fellowship that shall 
cause us to realize that we are with Him and possess 
Him forever. 

It will be new, also, as the cup of greeting differs from 
the cup of parting. In the cup of parting we give all 
good wishes, all kindly feelings, and pledge ourselves to 
mutual remembrance, and to sympathetic, spiritual com- 
muning ; yet with all this there is blended a feeling of 
sadness at the separation. But in the cup of greeting, we 
cannot stay to speak of good wishes and good feelings, and 
promises of fidelity, for the joy we have in coming to- 
gether face to face. The new wine will beam with the re- 
flection of that joy. 

And this parting promise seems to foreshadow a pecu- 
liar joy of Christ in the fellowship of His redeemed held 
in reserve, as it were, until that day of reunion. This cup 
of blessing He does not share with the angels. There are 
sympathies and communings, tender and inexpressible 
blendings of soul between Jesus and His disciples, which 
only the Humanity that He redeemed can know. Hence 
the significance of the negative as well as the positive 
terms of the promise ; " I will not drink henceforth of 
this fruit of the vine, until that Day when I drink it new 
with you in My Father's kingdom." 

And there is another deep spiritual meaning here : 
namely that the saints in heaven shall forever refer their feli- 
city to the Redemption wrought for them by Jesus through 
His death upon the cross. Upon the eve of offering Him- 
self up for their redemption, Christ gave to all who should 



THE FESTIVAL OF REDEMPTION. 215 

believe on His name, this cup as the symbol and memorial 
of His blood " shed for the remission of sins." With the 
parting injunction " This do in remembrance of Me," He 
coupled the promise of meeting them again in the higher 
fellowship of heaven. But there too, the joy of meeting 
their Lord, the bliss of being saved, would be presented 
under the symbol of a cup ; and though the wine would be 
new — the first interview there in w T onderful contrast with 
the parting here — yet would the wine, the cup, link all 
the blessedness of that reunion in heaven, to the tender 
memories of the sacrifice on earth — link the salvation 
yonder to the Redemption here ; and so, in the long in- 
terval Jesus Himself will not partake of the cup, until the 
memorial of suffering shall be transformed into the greet- 
ing of reunion, with all " the travail of His soul " 1 gath- 
ered about Him in His Father's kingdom. 

Under this exquisite figure of a festival of love begun 
on earth to be renewed and perfected in heaven, did the 
Lord Jesus set forth the fruits of His redemption to all 
believers. His doctrine of the Final State of the Right- 
eous is that, after the Resurrection and the Judgment, they 
shall dwell in perfect bliss and glory, amid the constant 
tokens of His presence and love. However high their 
joys in the intervening Paradise, there must come to them 
some wondrous augmentation when the Son of Man sit- 
ting on the Throne of His glory, with all nations gath- 
ered before Him, — shall say unto them upon His right 
hand, " Come ye blessed of My Father, inherit the king- 
dom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;" 2 
— blessed with the Saviour's welcome, blessed with His 
immediate presence, blessed of His Father, possessors of 
that " kingdom " for which they were created at the first 
in the divine image ; and were renewed as the spiritual 
sons of God. 

1 Isaiah liii. 11. 2 Matt. xxv. 34. 



216 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

A collocation of the words of Christ touching the final 
state of all believers teaches as the sum of His doctrine: 

(a). That one element in that state of blessedness which 
is promised them hereafter will be the near Presence of the 
Lord of their life and love. " I go," said He, " to prepare a 
place for you, and I will come again and receive you unto 
Myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." 1 In His 
last prayer for His disciples Jesus anticipated their coming 
to be with Himself, and His desire for this breathed to 
the Father was also the determination of that will which 
was always the will of God. He was about to return to 
that visible glory and blessedness in the heavenly man- 
sions, which He had with the Father before the world 
was ; but that glory would henceforth be brightened by 
His work of Redemption, and by the participation of His 
followers in the triumphs of His Resurrection : " Father, I 
will that they whom Thou hast given Me be with Me 
where I am ; that they may behold My glory which Thou 
hast given Me." 2 

The victorious leader of the American army, the second 
saviour of his country, with an honest pride summoned his 
son from West Point to witness his inauguration as Presi- 
dent, that he might behold and enjoy his father's honor; 
yet the son of the President could share the glory of his 
father only through its reflection upon him morally; 
nothing of the military renown, nor of the political distinc- 
tion was his ; and when the father's term of office shall 
expire, the son will be of no more consequence in Wash- 
ington than any other man. But the beholding of Christ's 
glory promised to His disciples is a sharing as well as a 
seeing; for Jesus has so identified Himself with His 
Church that His glory will pervade His people as being 
identified with Himself. "I am glorified in them;" 3 "I in 
them and Thou in Me." 4 

1 John xiv. 3. 2 John xvii. 24. 

3 John xvii. 10. * John xvii. 23. 



FREEDOM AND POWER OF THE REDEEMED. 217 

(6). A second element in this coming blessedness will be 
the exaltation of believers in honor, through their union with 
Christ. They shall " inherit a kingdom ; " not only shall 
they find themselves amid the visible splendors of the 
kingdom of God, bathing in the light and glory of His 
presence; out they shall know that all this is theirs for an 
eternal possession. All that God can communicate to 
them of honor and blessing, filling their nature to reple- 
tion, shall be theirs. He made man at the beginning to 
have dominion over other works of His hands : He 
crowned him with glory and honor and put all things 
under his feet. 1 But man uncrowned himself by sin — 
subjecting his soul with its divine instincts of knowledge 
and spiritual power, to the dictation of the body and its 
appetites, he cast away his lordship over nature, and be- 
came its servant. By redeeming man from sin, Christ has 
restored him to that spiritual power and dominion which 
from the foundation of the world were designed to be his ; 
and into the fulness of that kingdom the Redeemed shall 
enter in the heavenly state ; dominion over the powers of 
nature, so that nothing shall harm them ; dominion over 
evil spirits so that these shall no more tempt them ; do- 
minion over time and space through the powers of an 
unwearying and unending life. 

"Kingdom" is not mere position and sphere of action, 
but the consciousness of power, of capacity and exaltation ; 
ft The kingdom of God is within you." Could we for 
instance, transport ourselves, without external helps, at our 
own will, from star to star, we should have the kingdom 
over space ; the spirit-power would control distance, gravi- 
tation, all that pertains to motion and place. Some such 
joyous freedom of conscious power in respect of nature and 
her laws, may be a portion of the kingdom of the saints. 

(c). Another element of the final state of the righteous 
as promised by Christ is, that they shall have the approving 

1 Ps. viii. 6. 



218 THE THEOLOGY OF CHEIST. 

benediction of His Father, and so shall dwell in conscious 
fellowship with God. " Come, ye blessed of my Father." 1 
"Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the 
kingdom of their Father." 2 To be acknowledged as chil- 
dren of God denotes the completeness of the restoration 
which Christ has accomplished in believers. Sin severed 
the spiritual union of the soul with God and effaced His 
spiritual likeness ; sin made man no longer a child of God 
save in origin and name; and so completely does a moral 
resemblance set aside all resemblance by mere derivation or 
title, that to the Jews who, while calling themselves the 
children of God, denied the truth and the Son of God, Jesus 
said " Ye are of your Father, the devil" 3 But to them that 
believed on His name, Jesus imparted the glory of a 
sonship in privilege and promise analogous to His own : 
" The glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them ; 
that they may be one, even as we are one." l This filial 
relationship will be acknowledged and crowned with open 
benediction in that heavenly home. Then shall be ful- 
filled in its highest meaning that declaration of Christ, " He 
that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father." 5 " For the 
Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved Me, and 
believed that I came out from God." 6 As one has said, 
" God neither hopes nor believes, but knows and loves ;" 
therefore love is greater than faith or hope, because it does 
not 5 like these, only relate to God as an object, but belongs 
to God as a nature, so that in loving Him we share Him 
also. That beatific union Christ will proclaim at " that 
Day ;" saying, " Come, blessed of My Father." 

And His Father is their Father also. While they were 
yet in this world, if we may so speak, He had appropriated 
them as children; they had come to Him because the 
Father drew them ; receiving the Spirit of Christ they had 

1 Matt. xxv. 34. 2 Matt. xiii. 43. 

3 John viii. 44. 4 John xvii. 22. 

5 John xiv. 21. 6 John xvi. 27. 



THE FEATURES OF HEAVENLY BLISS. 219 

become "the children of the Highest," 1 and now the un- 
speakable blessedness of heaven, in the reciprocative love 
of God, shall be theirs by the gift of the Father. 

Other elements of heavenly felicity are set forth in the 
writings of the apostles, especially by Paul and John ; buv 
the plan of this treatise restricts us to the personal teachings 
of our Lord, and therefore we enumerate only those features 
of heaven which Jesus Himself has delineated. For the 
same reason we refrain from all speculation upon the nature 
of existence in the heavenly state and its modes of occupa- 
tion and enjoyment. We would not introduce one breath 
of mere conjecture to mar the serene beauty and dignity of 
the declarations of Christ. Yet few and brief as those 
declarations are, what higher heaven can we conceive than 
Jesus has promised, in a perpetual feast of love and joy, 
under new conditions of existence, not subject to partings 
and sorrows ; in His own near and abiding Presence ; in 
the sharing of His glory ; in the honor of a kingdom ; in 
the blessing of His Father, and a welcome to all the good 
His love can provide and all the joy that it can bring. 

This blessedness is traced directly to His Eedemption. 
This cup — the New Testament in His blood shed for the 
remission of sins — will be brought into remembrance at 
the threshold of that heavenly festival, because only by 
that blood could we have remission, and only through re- 
mission of sins can we have life and heaven. " As Moses 
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness even so must the Son 
of Man be lifted up that whosoever believeth in Him should 
not perish, but have eternal life." 2 

But though Christ Himself is the only door into heaven, 
and no man cometh to the Father but by Him, 3 yet there 
are conditions of mind and of action to be fulfilled on our 
part, in order that we may be numbered with the saved. 
Two such conditions Christ Himself laid down with empha- 

1 Luke vi. 35. 2 John iii. 14, 15. 3 John xiv. 6. 



220 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

sis in His solemn description of the last Judgment and the 
awards that shall follow it ; these are, confessing the name 
of Christ, and acting from the love of Christ. " Whoso- 
ever shall confess Me before men, him will I confess also 
before My Father which is in heaven. But whosoever 
shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My 
Father which is in heaven." * This confessing may take 
many different forms, and it is not the form of it that is es- 
sential as a condition, but the thing itself as truly and heartily 
done — not making a confession, but confessing Christ. 
To confess Christ is first of all to acknowledge Him in the 
soul as Redeemer and Lord ; to confess one's need of Him 
to take away sin ; to confess one's dependence upon Him 
for salvation ; to confess one's admiration of Him and 
homage toward Him ; to confess Him with the full sur- 
render of heart and life to His service. And one must 
likewise confess Him before men ; by a Christian tone and 
spirit in the family and in society ; by Christian principles 
in business and a Christian deportment in the common 
life. And in addition to these modes of confessing Christ, 
one should honor Him by some sort of public acknowledg- 
ment and testimony. The obvious way of making such 
confession is to join His Church ; and if one's reason for 
not doing this is an unwillingness to confess Christ, how 
can such an one hope that Christ will confess him ? 

The other condition of admission to the heavenly blessed- 
ness is a life of active benevolence prompted by love to 
Christ. In the commendation bestowed upon the right- 
eous in the day of judgment, their welcome to the kingdom 
seems to proceed upon the ground of the good works they 
had done. 2 Did our Lord then teach or imply a doctrine 
of salvation by works, or of merit ? The very statement 
contradicts that supposition ; for they who do such works 
have no thought of merit in them ; they are astonished and 

i Mat. x. 32, 33. 2 Matt. xxv. 34-37. 



RELATION OF WORKS TO SALVATION. 221 

overwhelmed at the enumeration ; " Lord, when saw we 
Thee an hungered and fed Thee? or thirsty, and gave 
Thee drink." l What they did was not in the endeavor to 
merit heaven, or to work out or work up a salvation, but 
was the acting out of a true love to Christ in dependence 
upon Him. These good works were not meritorious but 
evidential : " The works of love performed by the righteous 
are the proofs by which they evince their calling to the 
kingdom of God. As works of true love these presuppose 
living faith : faith and love are as inseparable as fire and 
warmth : the one cannot exist in its real nature without the 
other. External actions of charity may be dead works ; 
but our Lord speaks of the affluence of the inward tide of 
love in acts of holy charity." "Ye have done it unto 
Me :" — without thought of personal reward, without a cal- 
culation of merit, under the promptings of the Saviour's 
love, they had carried out His spirit in ministering to 
others. To act in all things from love to Christ denotes 
that vital union with Christ which qualifies the participant 
for the felicity of heaven. And since heaven consists more 
in spirit than in place, more in character than in condi- 
tion, this doing the will of Christ in the daily life is not 
so much a formal preparation for the life to come, as it is 
the present experience of that principle of holy living 
which shall find its proper consummation in the Life Ever- 
lasting. 

i Matt. xxv. 37. 



CHAPTEK XVII. 

FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 

"We have traced the doctrine of Christ step by step from 
His first preaching of the necessity of repentance and the 
new birth, and His promise of eternal life to all who 
should believe upon the Son of Man as lifted up upon the 
cross, to the announcement of the day in which He will 
come again to judge the quick and the dead ; and pausing 
as it were at the threshold of the eternal state, we have 
heard the words of final greeting, " Come, ye blessed of 
My Father, enter into the kingdom prepared for you from 
the foundation of the world." 1 Would that we might close 
our contemplation of that scene Avith these thrilling words 
of invitation! — that there were no alternative to be looked 
upon, no contrast to the picture that Christ has given of 
Himself embosomed in the midst of His glorified disciples 
at the festival of the new wine, the feast of immortal life 
and love in His Father's kingdom. But since He has 
stated the alternative and drawn the contrast, we must fol- 
low His teachings in all fidelity to the end. Already at 
the beginning of His ministry, in the first proclamation of 
the Gospel, the alternative was presented, the contrast was 
foreshadowed. He came that "whosoever believeth in 
Him should not perish, but have eternal life ; " and this 
clearly implies that they who would not believe must 
perish ; which, indeed, was expressly declared in that " he 
that believeth on Him is not condemned; but he that be^ 
lieveth not is condemned already." 2 And the contrast 

1 Matt. xxr. 34. 2 John iii. 18. 

222 



THE WARNINGS OF CHRIST. 223 

which was thus pointedly stated at the beginning of the 
Gospel, runs through our Lord's discourses and parables to 
the close ; and is there drawn out in the form of results 
that are positive, visible, and unchangeable. 

The issue of life or death, salvation or condemnation, 
was always present to the mind of Jesus in preaching the 
Gospel. A future state of rewards and punishments formed 
a back-ground of motive and warning in every discourse, 
and in some discourses was brought most impressively into 
the foreground. Self-denial, the renouncing of besetting 
sin was urged for the reason that " It is better to enter into 
life halt or maimed, than that the whole body should be 
cast into hell." l Courage in acknowledging Christ was 
urged by this plea : " Fear not them which kill the body, 
but are not able to kill the soul ; but rather fear Him who 
is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." 2 His 
hearers were exhorted to " enter in at the strait gate, for 
wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to de- 
struction, and many there be which go in thereat." 3 They 
were exhorted to " make the tree good," the heart right, 
because " every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is 
hewn down and cast into the fire." 4 They were warned 
that mere professions could not save them, for even " chil- 
dren of the kingdom," born of the seed of Abraham — for 
not receiving Christ, shall be " cast out into outer dark- 
ness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth;" 5 for 
while in this world much that is evil is gathered into the 
visible church,*" at the end of the world the angels shall 
come forth and sever the wicked from among the just, and 
shall cast them into the furnace of fire." 6 The Pharisees 
and all hypocrites were warned of "the damnation of 
hell." 7 Dives having lived a sensual, worldly life, on 
dying went to a place of misery, and " was in torments ; " 8 

1 Matt, xviii. 8. " Matt. x. 28. 3 Matt. vii. 13. 4 Matt. vii. 19. 5 Matt. viii. 12 
6 Matt. xiii. 42. 1 Matt, xxiii. 33. 8 Luke xvi. 23. 



224 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

" What then is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole 
world, and lose his own soul?" 1 The foolish virgins, 
having no oil of grace in their lamps, shall knock and cry 
in vain at the door of heaven, forever shut against them. 2 
" Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we 
not prophesied in Thy name? and in Thy name have cast 
out devils? and in Thy name done many wonderful 
works ? And then will I profess unto them I never knew 
you; depart from Me, ye that work iniquity." 3 "All 
that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of 
Man, and shall come forth; — they that have done good, 
unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, 
unto the resurrection of damnation." * " These shall go 
away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into 
life eternal." 5 " For the Son of Man shall come in the 
glory of His Father, with His angels ; and then He shall 
reward every man according to his works." 6 

All these are the very words of Christ. The doctrine of 
a coming judgment, at which a direct recompense from 
God shall be rendered to men individually according to 
character, is not an invention of a malignant theology. It 
was the constant teaching of Jesus Christ, and distin- 
guishes Christianity as a moral system, with positive 
awards, from systems that refer all evils to purely natural 
causes. 

That penal consequences follow upon the transgression 
of physical laws, and that these are intended to have a 
moral effect in restraining transgression, is* written in the 
whole constitution of Nature and of Man. Some main- 
tain, however, that the penalties of transgression are lim- 
ited to the operation of natural laws ; that these may be 
retrieved at any time in the future by a change of conduct 
on the part of the sufferer ; or will work themselves out at 

1 Matt. xvi. 26. 2 Matt. xxv. 1 seq. 8 Matt. vii. 22. 

4 John v. 28. 5 Matt. xxv. 46. 6 Matt. xvi. 27. 



NATURAL SEQUENCES OF SIN. 225 

last iii his atonement and purification. In other words, 
by the doctrine of natural consequences, sin and its effects 
are simply a question between man and the general system 
of laws within which he exists. Certain actions are fol- 
lowed by certain effects. Whoever therefore, transgresses 
the laws of his being or the laws of the universe must ex- 
pect to take the consequences. This doctrine of natural 
consequences is true so fax as it goes; and this alone should 
suffice to deter men from transgressing the laws of their 
being. But Christ taught that the punishment of sin will 
embody the additional element of a positive retribution 
from His hand as the righteous Judge of the world ; — that 
He Himself will reward every man according to His 
works; and that these awards will be final and everlasting. 

Exception is taken to this doctrine of a direct and posi- 
tive retribution as inconsistent with the wisdom and good- 
ness of God, and with the plan of salvation ; it is styled a 
dogma of a hard and arbitrary theology. But since this 
feature is made so prominent in the Gospel, since it is a 
doctrine most emphatically pronounced by Jesus Christ 
Himself, it cannot be set aside except by setting aside the 
whole of Christianity ; it is linked with the doctrine of 
Jesus from first to last ; and it must be in harmony with 
the divine justice and love that beam from ^very page of 
His Gospel. 

Our Lord's doctrine of retribution differs from the doc- 
trine of natural sequences in two material points. First, in 
place of a natural law of cause and effect, it sets before us 
a personal judge whose word declares the penalty; and 
secondly it makes that penalty a positive infliction upon 
moral grounds, because of character and not the mere issue 
of a natural law. We have already in part discussed this 
distinction, l but it is so striking and momentous that it 

1 See Chap. xr. 
15 



226 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

deserves a further consideration. It marks the difference 
between a machine-world in which things move on by 
mere natural routine, and a moral government in which 
the Creator and Head of the universe maintains His au- 
thority over intelligent creatures by moral laws with their 
proper sanctions. 

Recalling for a moment the scene of the final judgment, 
as portrayed by Christ, we there behold Himself sitting 
upon the throne of His glory, and all nations gathered 
before Him; He separates mankind into two classes by 
the test of character, and He Himself pronounces the final 
award; He addresses the one class as "Blessed of His 
Father/' and welcomes them to " the kingdom " reserved 
for them ; this He does as King and Judge, with an 
authority whose effect is immediate and final; then this 
same judicial authoritative voice says to those upon the left 
hand, " Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." 
And the result of this solemn proceeding is summed up in 
the words — " These shall go away into everlasting punish- 
ment, but the righteous into life eternal." 1 Now it may 
be said this scene is pictorial, and that much of the language 
is the drapery of a poetic description. Grant this, but of 
what is it a picture ? and what instruction is it designed to 
convey ? Does it picture the mere working of natural laws, 
by which at death men one by one drop into their respective 
places in a future state of existence? Can this vivid and 
impressive picture be reduced to a mere parable of natural 
distinctions and natural sequences? How then shall we 
dispose of the central figure — the living personal Christ? 
How dwindle down the collective multitudes, divided by 
character, into a mere succession of individuals passing off 
the stage each in his own time and way ? This is a picture 
indeed, but a picture whose corresponding reality is a formal, 
definitive judgment which the Saviour in person will pro- 

1 Mat. xxv. 46. 



NATURAL LAWS HAVE PENALTIES. 227 

nounce upon men according to their deeds. 1 — This certainly 
is the doctrine of Christ concerning the future retribution ; 
and if we compare this in detail with the doctrine that all 
punishment is the result of natural causes, we shall find it 
more than that in accordance with the reason of things. 

(a). Both views agree as to the fact of penalty. Strictly 
speaking there is no sect in religion nor school of philosophy 
that absolutely denies that sin incurs penalty. Those who 
hold that there is no retribution after death — if there are 
any such — argue that sin receives its whole punishment 
through the evils of the present life, or that Christ has 
cancelled these indiscriminately for all ; and those who hold 
to the final restoration of the wicked to holiness and heaven, 
admit that there will be a future retribution, but argue 
that this will at length satisfy itself, or will work the refor- 
mation of the offender. In either case then it is admitted 
that law has a penalty for transgression ; and the difference 
between all these schemes of natural sequence and Christ's 
doctrine of retribution lies in the form of the penalty and 
the manner of inflicting it. 

The fact that penalty is affixed to the laws of nature is 
too obvious to require proof. He who violates the laws of 
health, in respect of air, of food, of sleep, of exposure, of 
labor, must take the consequences in suffering, in debility, 
in premature death. He who disregards the known proper- 
ties and effects of the substances and elements of nature, 
who puts hfe hand into melted lead or takes strychnine 
into his stomach, must suffer in consequence. Every child 
knows that a world of laws must be also a world of penal- 
ties. In the fact of penalty, therefore, all theories agree. 

(b). It is agreed also, upon both theories — the natural 
and the Christian — that penalty for the violation of law is 
just; — that is just in the principle of it, for we are not here 
speaking of manner or degree. Those who accept Christ's 

1 See Cbap. xv. 



228 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

teaching of course believe this, for they believe in the 
righteousness of God. And those who regard all suffering 
as simply the consequence of violating natural law, do not 
accuse nature of injustice or cruelty because of the suffer- 
ing that follows disobedience. Now the benevolence of 
God might just as well be impeached because of these 
penalties of natural law, as for a positive retribu- 
tion. But how absurd we should think it, if a man who 
<had burnt his hand by his own carelessness, should go up 
and down in a raging passion against the cruelty of nature 
in making fire burn. We use all the great agents of 
nature, fire, steam, chemical forces, subject to the risk and 
the penalty of violating or abusing them ; and the penalty 
of disobedience or disregard which all men see to be a 
fact, men also admit to be just. "You should have 
known better/' "You should have taken care," — these 
and like phrases impute the evil not to the law but to the 
transgressor. The pain which is incidental to the viola- 
tion of the law renders even physical law a means of moral 
discipline. 

(c). Both theories — the natural and the Christian — agree 
that natural evil may be fitly made a penalty for moral 
disobedience. When the mother warns her child not. to go 
near the fire, and lays her strict commands upon him, if 
he goes and burns himself, she teaches him that his suffer- 
ing comes not only from disregarding the properties of fire, 
but from disobeying her command. A drunkard violates 
not only the laws of his physical constitution, but the laws 
of reason and of conscience, the laws of good society, the 
moral law of God ; and though the penalty comes chiefly 
in the form of physical suffering and degradation, we yet 
attach this to moral* as well as to physical law. 

Human laws annex physical penalties to moral offences. 
Theft, though committed upon inanimate things is a 
breach of morality ; murder, though committed upon the 



SUPERIORITY OP MORAL LAW. 229 

physical body, is a crime of deepest moral die. The law 
punishes these crimes with physical pains and privations 
that have no connection with the physical objects violated. 
Hence it is absurd to say that all penalty comes merely in 
the way of natural sequence from natural laws ; it attaches 
itself also to the great principles of moral law. 

Thus far, then, the theory that penalty comes in due 
course of nature, and the doctrine of Christ that it is in- 
flicted by God as a righteous governor for the infraction 
of His laws agree in these successive steps: — (d). that 
there is penalty, as a matter of fact, in the system under 
which we live, whether we call this nature or providence ; 
(e). that as a principle, the infliction of penalty for trans- 
gression is wise and just; (/). and that penalty, though 
coming in the form of natural evil, often stands visibly 
connected with the infraction of moral law. But from this 
point the doctrine of Christ goes farther, and teaches 
that penalty shall be pronounced directly from Himself 
as Judge, aside from or in addition to the natural course 
of things, and as the fit and just conclusion of this very 
dispensation of grace. The rule or principle here laid 
down for the infliction of penalty is the rule of absolute 
justice. Each man shall be judged according to what he 
has or has not done ; and " that servant which knew his 
Lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did accor- 
ding to His will, shall be beaten with many stripes." l 

Man's relations to the moral law, and to all law in his 
character as a moral being are far superior to his relations 
to physical law. The soul no less than the body has its 
own laws. In his own free actions, his moral conduct, man 
is bound to do right by an obligation as strong surely as 
that which binds him to observe the laws of nature in the 
oare of his body ; and as a moral being he must be amen- 
able to moral law. This law has certain penalties that 

1 Luke xii. 4,7. 



230 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

come as matter of course, as certainly as the sequences of 
physical laws — such as remorse of conscience ; the loss of 
self-respect ; a sense of unhappiness ; the apprehension of 
evil. The principle of penalty for disobedience here dis- 
tinctly applies. 

In threatening to inflict a direct positive penalty for 
sin, in distinction from its natural sequences, Christ an- 
nounced beforehand a rule of perfect justice. It is that He 
will try men solely by their own actions, and will recom- 
pense them according to the tenor of their spirit and con- 
duct. This is a rule of perfect equity. If any have 
obeyed the law, they could desire no more favorable rule 
than to be rewarded according to their deeds. And for 
such as have broken the law there could be no rule more 
just and equal than that they shall be dealt with exactly 
according to their conduct ; that they should receive sim- 
ply that which is their due. The Judge of infinite right- 
eousness, of perfect knowledge, goodness, and truth, will 
do right in dealing with men according to their deeds. 
And if, moreover, they have had opportunity given them 
to escape penalty by repentance, and have refused this, it 
will be perfect justice to deal with them upon their own 
ground. 

Hence the rule of personal reckoning here laid down is 
proper and equitable. Men are not to be judged collec- 
tively or in classes, by some general sweeping act, but 
each and every man according to that which he hath done. 
The' formative influences of society upon personal char- 
acter, the circumstances in which a life was molded, the 
relative degrees of darkness and light in each individual 
case, the temptations to sin, the allurements to virtue, all 
that affected the man in the course of his earthly conduct, 
will enter into the judgment upon that conduct ; and in 
the light of all these conditions and circumstances, each in- 
dividual case will be made up for its own issue. This is 



THE GRANDEUR OF VIRTUE. 231 

the fairest rule of judgment that can be imagined. What 
could any man ask for himself, or what could he conceive 
of as a principle of judgment, more scrupulously just than 
this — that each and every man be judged according to his 
personal conduct? 

We now come to the gist of Christ's doctrine of punish- 
ment. The fact of penalty and its justice being recognized, 
it being also established that natural evil may proper- 
ly be used as a penalty for moral transgression ; and the 
rule of judgment by personal conduct being absolutely 
just, it remains only to consider the reasons for a positive 
judgment and retribution in distinction from the natural 
consequences of violated law. Such a judgment is due to 
the transcendent worth and dignity of moral interests in 
the universe, and to the claims of public justice and right 
in a moral government. Man's highest dignity and worth 
is in the sphere of morality. Here it is, as a being capa- 
ble of moral choice, of knowing truth and obeying virtue, 
capable of principles of action as lofty as the mind of God 
and enduring as His throne, in a word capable of holiness 
and its immeasurable blessedness, it is in this that man is 
allied to angels and to God. Build one broad and stable 
pyramid of physical laws ; if it were possible heap into one 
stupendous mass all the matter now shaped and distributed 
into ten thousand worlds ; above this place again the no- 
blest powers and attainments of intellectual life— indeed, 
if this were possible, the accumulated powers and products 
of mind in its highest spheres ; still above these must we 
place in sublime pre-eminence a pure and perfect moral 
character, as the crown of all excellence, the height of all 
dignity, the seat of all true power and grandeur, the nearest 
approach to the divine. " Man partakes of all that is be- 
low him, and becomes man by the addition of something 
higher : this is, the rational and moral life by which man 
is made in the image of God. For in man, as thus con- 



232 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

stituted, we first find a being who is capable of choosing 
his own end; or rather, of choosing or rejecting the end 
indicated by his whole nature. Up to man every thing is 
driven to its end by a force working from without, or from 
behind ; but for him the pillar of cloud and of fire puts 
itself in front, and he follows it or not, as he chooses." x 

And now for a being with these majestic endowments, 
with these sublime possibilities, has the Creator no recog- 
nition, no rule, no administration higher than the laws of 
the physical creation ? Has this rational image of God, 
laws of digestion, and laws of locomotion, but no laws of 
moral action ? Shall a stone give him pain if he strike 
his foot against it, shall his body surfer for any infraction 
of mere physical law, and shall there be for his soul, with 
its voluntary powers, no moral government of the Creator 
having sanctions commensurate with the interests of a 
moral universe? Is this soul, by "which alone man is 
man, governed down at the low level of the animal nature 
with which it is associated — subject to law and amenable 
to penalty only so far as it comes into contact with the 
physical creation ? Has the wise and good God committed 
such a solecism in government, that He has made every- 
thing subject to law except that which alone is great 
enough to comprehend law and intelligently obey it ? — that 
the lowest animal, the meanest plant, the very stones 
beneath our feet have laws corresponding with their 
nature, but the soul of man has no government appropriate 
to itself? Is it credible that there is no moral government 
over the universe of intelligent beings ? Nothing but a 
machinery of physical law ? Is it credible that God has 
not made known to man the law that should govern his 
higher nature, or that He will not show His regard for 
that law by sanctions conformed to its worth and proceed- 
ing from Himself? Surely as God is great, as the soul is 

1 Rev. Mark Hopkins, D. D. 



JUSTICE THE STRENGTH OF SOCIETY. 233 

great in His image, as a universe of moral beings is great 
above all the greatness of God's other works, there is 
a government based upon the grandeur of virtue, there is 
a law embodying holiness as the rule of man, and there 
are penalties answering to the greatness of these parties 
and the grandeur of these interests. 

Moreover, the claims of public justice and security in a 
moral government demand that there be a positive retribu- 
tion upon sin from the Ruler Himself. Society recognizes 
this principle in all criminal law. Doubtless the criminal 
suffers certain natural consequences of his crime, in remorse 
of conscience, in terrors of imagination, in the conscious- 
ness of social ignominy. But he stands not alone ; he is 
related to society as a whole; and justice is the strength of 
the social organism. The criminal owes therefore a debt 
to public justice as well as to natural law. If a man 
poisons his wife that he may be free to live a life of shame, 
is that a private affair of his own household? Society 
takes notice of it as a crime against itself, and law has a 
penalty. We measure the moral tone of society by the 
sure and impartial justice it metes out to such a crime. If 
to evade legal penalty the criminal poisons himself, should 
this be accepted as making the account square with justice ? 
Is the moral law satisfied by another crime ? Would the 
social law of the universe be satisfied by the transportation 
of the criminal to heaven ? When we read that " the Son 
of Man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather 
out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which 
do iniquity," l we feel that the mercy that offers salvation 
to all who in faith and holy love will seek the kingdom of 
God is enhanced by that righteousness which shall here- 
after separate the evil from the good. 

But it is objected that the doctrine of eternal punish^ 
ment cannot be reconciled with the goodness of God. We, 
however, are not here in a position to judge of the relation 

1 Matt. xiii. 41. 



234 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

of sin to the whole moral universe, nor of what the equi- 
librium of mercy and justice — which is essential to the re- 
storation of a moral system once disordered by sin — may 
require alike of the wisdom, the goodness, and the right- 
eousness of God. And the only question now before us is, 
what did Christ teach? If He distinctly taught the 
eternal punishment of the wicked, then if upon specula- 
tive grounds we reject that doctrine, we cannot with 
propriety claim to be His disciples. 

Much that Christ said concerning future punishment 
was in the form either of metaphor or of parable ; and it 
has been aptly said, " If we are to turn rhetoric into logic, 
and build a dogma on every metaphor, our belief will be 
of a vague and contradictory character. " But the meta- 
phors and parables of Christ were intended to convey some 
substantial truth — the metaphor represented a correspond- 
ing reality, the figure had a basis of fact. Taken literally, 
His metaphors would neutralize one another ; — "the outer 
darkness" and " the everlasting fire ; " " the fire that 
never shall be quenched," would seem to mark the utter 
destruction of sentient being ; while the " torments " of 
Dives, and the " worm that dieth not," suggest the con- 
sciousness of suffering. But shall we, therefore, infer that 
" hell " is altogether a figure of speech, and that these 
vivid pictures have no corresponding reality ? The laws 
of language require us to understand from these very 
metaphors, that the future state of the ungodly will be one 
of conscious and irremediable misery — the " darkness " of 
banishment from God, the " unquenchable fires " of mem- 
ory, the " undying worm " of remorse — a state of mental 
anguish pre-figured by physical emblems, which neither 
the imagination of Dante nor of Milton could fully inter- 
pret, neither the pencil of Tintoretto, of Michael Angelo, nor 
of Dore could worthily represent. The emblems of future 
punishment used by Christ were not like the material 



MEANING OF PUNISHMENT. 235 

images that painters and poets have addressed to the eye 
and the imagination, bufc were designed to suggest realities 
in spiritual experience too awful for fancy to dwell upon. 
These address themselves to the soberest judgment, and 
with a higher solemnity as proceeding from the lips of the 
compassionate Son of God. 

Moreover, Christ did not always speak of future punish- 
ment in words of metaphor. He used no figure of 
speech, no terms of rhetoric, when in closing His descrip- 
tion of the last judgment, He said with the simple direct- 
ness of a judicial sentence — "These shall go away into 
everlasting punishment ; but the righteous into life eter- 
nal:" l — Fac, xbXaoiv olcbviov on the one hand, e«V £ coy v 
aitbvtov on the other. The term xoXaat? means strictly not 
destruction, annihilation, but chastisement or punishment ; 
thus the Sanhedrim threatened Peter and John, and let 
them go, "finding nothing how they might punish them," 2 
xoldaajvTfM : it sometimes denotes the apprehension of pain 
and suffering ; — thus " fear hath torment" 3 xbXaalv. The 
Septuagint uses this word to describe a variety of punish- 
ments inflicted upon the wicked, both individually, and as 
communities or nations. Thus, to the house of Israel it 
was said " Repent ; so iniquity shall not be your ruin " — 
xoXaacv : * and again, to be " tormented by beasts " was a 
xoXacrcc. 5 Plato in his Gorgias uses the word in its primi- 
tive sense of pruning or restraining ; thus — " Is not to 
restrain one from what he desires to punish him ?" 
xoXd^eev, and " to punish the soul (xoXa^sadac) is therefore 
better than unrestrained indulgence." 6 Again, he says, 
" no one punishes (xoXd^w) the unjust because he has been 
unjust, but for the sake of the future, that he may not 
again do unjustly." 7 It is plain from both Biblical and 
Classical usage that xbXaatz, has no affinity with annihila- 

1 Matt xxv. 4<?. 2 Acts iv. 21. 3 1 John iv. 13. 4 Ezek. xviii. 30. 

5 Wisdom xvi. 2. 6 Gorgias 505 B., and C. 7 Protagoras, 324, B. 



236 THE THEOLOGY OF CHEIST. 

tion, but denotes a punishment the subject of which con- 
tinues conscious under its infliction. 

Will then the punishment inflicted upon the ungodly at 
the last judgment be of a disciplinary nature, having in 
view their reformation and their final restoration to the 
estate of the good? This view is precluded by the term 
accbwov — the punishment will be "eternal." This word, 
indeed, is sometimes used vaguely for " duration," whether 
indefinite or limited • an -ZEon however protracted may 
still have a definite end. But the Greek language has no 
other word that so fully and properly expresses that which 
is unlimited as to duration ; it is used by Plato for the 
ceaseless course of things as contrasted with the limitations 
of time ; and in the New Testament aicovtoz is the word 
that expresses the eternity of God's being and the everlast- 
ing felicity of the righteous. And in the words now under 
consideration, the two states of " life " and " punishment " 
are made to run parallel in an endless duration; "these 
shall go away into punishment alcovcou, but the righteous 
into life aicoviov. It is impossible here to limit in the one 
case that whHi is unlimited in the other. If we believe 
that the life promised by Christ to the righteous shall last 
forever, then are we shut up to the literal meaning of His 
alternative words; and when we consider what it must be 
to go away from Christ, to go away from His love, His 
glory, His blessed presence ; to go away under His con- 
demnation ; all His dread imagery of wo — the " fire," the 
" darkness," the " tormenting flame," the " undying worm" 
— is justified by this final sentence, " These shall go away 
into everlasting punishment." * 

1 See the Author's Love and Penalty ; also Appendix iii. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

Christ's Doctrine our spiritual sacrament. 

Many a reader of the last chapter may be ready to say 
" this is an hard saying, who can hear it." But Jesus ut- 
tered many sayings that seemed hard to minds but little 
exercised in spiritual things ; and of just such hard un- 
bearable words He said, " They are spirit and they are 
life." l 

All the teachings of Christ were spiritual in their in- 
tent, and as such were a life-power to the soul. Never 
touching upon philosophy, physics, or political econ- 
omy, He addressed Himself throughout to the spiritual 
nature of man, with a view to reviving, ennobling, sancti- 
fying this, and hence His words were not merely instruc- 
tion, counsel, knowledge, doctrine, but Life. Christ was 
the most spiritual of teachers, and His doctrine both has 
vitality in itself and gives life to them that receive it. 

The same is true of the Sacrament that He instituted to 
perpetuate Himself in the memory of His disciples ; this is 
the embodiment of a Truth that is Life in proportion as it 
is spiritually received — " The words that I speak unto you 
are spirit and are life." This was said of the words He 
hid. just spoken concerning eating His flesh and drinking 
His blood, as the means of dwelling in Him, and of ob- 
taining spiritual and eternal life. He had described Him- 
self as the "bread of God," 2 the "bread of life," 3 the 
"true bread from heaven," 4 "the living bread which came 
down from heaven ;" 5 and had said, " If any man eat of 

iJohnvi. 63. 2 John vi. 33. 3 v. 35. 4 v . 32. 5 v . 51. 

237 



238 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

this bread, he shall live forever." l The bread He then 
denned more literally as His flesh, which He would give 
for the life of the world. 

These sayings caused much perplexity to the Jews, who 
at length broke out into a strife about His doctrine as un- 
natural and absurd, saying " How can this man give us 
His flesh to eat ?" 2 But instead of toning down or ex- 
plaining away His words, Jesus made them even more 
literally sensuous than before : saying " Except ye eat the 
flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no 
life in you ; whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My 
blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last 
day. For My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink 
indeed. He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood, 
dwelleth in Me and I in him :" 3 and then as if to chal- 
lenge their captious criticism to the utmost, He put the 
doctrine in this bald statement, " He that eateth Me, even 
He shall live by Me." 4 

Even His disciples were troubled by such words ; and 
" many said, this is a hard saying, "Who can' hear it ?" 5 
Jesus perceiving their murmurings, said, " Doth this of- 
fend you ? What and if ye shall see the Son of Man as- 
cend up where He was before ?" 6 The resurrection and 
ascension of Christ would confirm His statement that He 
came down from heaven, and would show also that He 
had within Himself the power of life ; the witnesses of 
those events would understand the spiritual meaning of 
His words and the spiritual value of his death. And 
hence there was a life-power in the words He had just 
spoken, when they were spiritually apprehended. 

It will be easier to understand His use of this bald, almost 
sensuous literalism about eating His flesh and drinking His 
blood, if we bear in mind how extensively the language of 
spiritual ideas is based upon sensible objects, and how 

i John vi. 51. 2 vi. 52. 3 vi. 53, 57. 4 vi. 57. 6 vi. 60. ^vi. 62. 



THE SPIRITUAL TAUGHT BY THE PHYSICAL. 239 

naturally the mind when seeking a strong expression for 
a spiritual truth, in order to present it more vividly and 
effectively, seizes upon something in nature as its symbol, 
and teaches the inward by the outward. " Words are signs 
of natural facts. The outer creation gives us language for 
the beings and changes of the inward creation. Every 
word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, 
if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some 
material appearance. Right means straight; wrong means 
twisted. We say the heart to express emotion, the head to 
denote thought. An enraged man is a lion, a cunning man 
is a fox, a firm man is a rock, a learned man is a torch. 
A lamb is innocence : a snake is subtile spite. Light and 
darkness are our familiar expression for knowledge and 
ignorance, and heart for love. Thus words are fastened to 
visible things ; and the moment our discourse rises above 
the ground line of familiar facts, and is inflamed with 
passion or exalted by thought, jt clothes itself in images 
taken from nature." * 

In this view our Lord's saying, so far from being hard 
and mysterious was as natural as it was forcible. He was 
dealing with men who were carnal in their feelings and 
desires ; who followed Him for the excitement of seeing 
His miracles and for the present benefit they hoped to 
receive from these. "Ye seek Me, because ye did eat 
of the loaves and were filled." It was in vain to talk 
to such men about the superiority of spiritual ideas and 
aims to carnal desires, or of the spiritual design of His 
mission, the thing must be put before them baldly at their 
own level ; and the spiritual conveyed to them in the form 
of bodily figures. And so Jesus said to them, You must eat 
the true bread ; it is not enough that you see what I do 
and hear what I say ; you are to be saved by receiving 
Me ; you must take Me as I am, you must eat Me. 

1 R. W. Emerson, Essay on Language. 



240 THE THEOLOGY OF CHEIST. 

Neander has given an interpretation of these words 
which accords equally well with the uses of metaphor by 
Christ, and with the spiritual philosophy that pervaded 
His teaching. " Jesus tells the Jews that He would give 
them a bread which was to impart life to the world ; hence 
that the bread which He was about to give was, in a certain 
sense, different from the bread which He was ; different, 
that is, from His whole self-communication. And the 
bread which I will give is my flesh. This bread was to be 
the self-sacrifice of His bodily life for the salvation of man- 
kind. The life-giving power, as such, was His Divine- 
human existence ; the life-giving power, in its special act y 
was His self-sacrifice. The two are inseparable ; the lat- 
ter being the essential means of realizing the former; only 
by His self-sacrifice could His Divine-human life become 
the bread of life for men. 

" The Jews wilfully perverted these words of Christ into 
a carnal meaning; and therefore He repeated and strength- 
ened them : Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man : — 
' except ye receive My Divine-human life within you, 
make it as your own flesh and blood, and become tho- 
roughly penetrated by the Divine principle of life, which 
Christ has imparted to human nature and Himself realized 
in it, ye cannot partake of eternal life.' 

" When He had left the synagogue, and was standing 
among persons who, up to that time, had been His constant 
attendants, He said, * I have spoken to you of eating My 
flesh; doth this offend you? What then will you say 
when the Son of Man will ascend into heaven ? Xou will 
then see Me no more with your bodily eyes ;, but yet it 
will be necessary for you to eat my flesh and drink my 
blood, which then, in a carnal sense, will be plainly impos- 
sible/ It is obvious, therefore, that Christ meant no 
material participation in His flesh and blood, but one 



TRANSUBSTANTJATION. 241 

which would have its fullest import and extent at the time 
specified. 

" He then naturally passes on to explain the spiritual 
import of His life-streaming words. It is the spirit that 
giveth life ; the flesh is nothing ; hence I could not have 
meant a sensible eating of My flesh and blood, but the ap- 
propriation of My spirit, as the life-giving principle, as 
this communicates itself through My manifestation in flesh 
and blood. As My words are only the medium through 
which the Spirit of life that gushes forth from Me is im- 
parted, they can be rightly understood only so far as the 
Spirit is perceived in them." l Such is the true signifi- 
cance of eating the flesh of Christ, and drinking His 
blood. 

These words do not countenance that literal sensuous 
view of the Sacrament which is given in the notion of the 
real presence or transubstantiation taught by the Roman 
Catholic Church. That doctrine is that " our Lord Jesus 
Christ, true God and man, is truly, really, and substan- 
tially contained in the sacrament of the holy eucharist 
after the consecration of the bread and wine, and under the 
form of these sensible objects." By the priestly act of con- 
secration, or by some miraculous influence which attends 
that act, it is claimed that " the whole substance of the 
bread is converted into the substance of the body of Christ 
our Lord, and the whole substance of the wine into the 
substance of His blood." 2 

1 Life of Jesus Christ, by Augustus Neander, Am. Ed. pp. 267-269. 

3 The Council of Trent, in the Decree of Session xiii. Be sanctissimo Etichar- 
ixtioz Sacramento, has declared it to be the binding faith of the Church, " that 
immediately after the consecration, the true body of our Lord, and His true 
blood, together with His soul and divinity, do exist under the species of bread 
and wine; His body under the species of bread, and His blood under the 
species of wine, by virtue of the words of consecration ; His body also under 
the species of wine, and His blood under the species of bread, and His soul 
under each species, (through that natural connection and concomitance by 
which all the parts of Christ our Lord, who has risen from the dead, no 
16 



242 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

This notion is based upon a literal interpretation of 
such sayings as these : " This is My body, which is broken 
for you ;" " This cup is the New Testament in My blood ;" 
and again, "My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is 
drink indeed." But such an interpretation supposes phy- 
sical impossibilities and absurdities which would make 
nonsense of the words of Christ ; such as that, He while 
sitting before them a living man in His proper flesh and 
blood, was at the same instant present as to His body in 
the bread, and as to His blood in the wine ; or that He 
who is now absent as to His body in heaven is yet present 
in body in the sacrament, so that His body yet remaining 
in heaven is at the same moment created anew in ten thou- 
sand places upon earth, or wherever the sacrament is ob- 
served. It is idle to class this pretense among miracles, 
for no miracle of oar Lord ever involved a contradiction 
in the nature of things. His language does not call for 
any such interpretation. He said, " I am the door." " I 
am the light of the world." "I am the true vine;" and 
pre-Raphaelites have attempted to depict Him under these 
various symbols; yet no one dreams of taking such expres- 

more to die, are closely joined together) ; — and even His divinity is there 
also, through the wonderful and hypostatieal union thereof with His body 
and soul." Cap. iii. 

By this it is taught that the substance of the bread and the wine completely 
disappear — only the species or appearance of either remaining — and that under 
this is the real substance of the Lord Jesus Christ, body and blood, soul and 
divinity. Whoever shall deny this, or shall affirm that Christ is present, "only 
in a sign and figure, or by His power " is declared accursed. 

Dr. Moehler, one of the most able and judicious expounders of the Roman 
Catholic faith, says, " Catholics firmly hold that Almighty God who was 
pleased at Cana, in Galilee, to convert water into wine, changes the inward 
substance of the consecrated bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. 
This belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, forms the basis of 
our whole conception of the mass. Without that presence, the solemnity of 
the Lord's Supper is a mere reminiscence of the sacrifice of Christ, exactly in 
the same way as the celebration by any society, of the anniversary of some 
esteemed individual, whose image it exhibits to view, or some other symbol, 
recalls tojmnd his beneficent actions." SymbolUm, $ xxxiv. 



SACRAMENTS APPOINTED BY CHRIST. 243 

sions literally. The Church is His body ; do we, then, eat 
the Church in the sacrament? 

The Jews rebelled against Christ's doctrine of His flesh 
and blood, because they insisted on taking it literally and 
making it absurd. But Jesus said of these very words, 
They are spirit and life ; you must look beneath the form 
for the meaning. 

But they should not be pressed so far in the opposite 
direction as to take away from the sacrament its real basis 
and force as a symbol. A highly respectable body of 
Christians — the Society of Friends — reject altogether the 
outward sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, 
and regard the baptism of the Spirit, and a spiritual com- 
muning with Christ by meditation, as all that Jesus in- 
tended to be preserved among His disciples. But how 
shall we then account for the solemnity with which, at the 
last Passover, He took the bread and the cup, and with 
prayer and thanksgiving set these forth as symbols and 
memorials of His body and blood, and said to His disci- 
ples, " This do in remembrance of me. 7 ' l This surely 
meant that they should go on to do as He then did ; that 
is, should set apart bread and wine as a memorial. 

The disciples acted upon this from the day of the Lord's 
death ; and the Apostle Paul, while correcting some 
abuses that had crept into the observance of the Supper, 
recognizes the sacrament itself as appointed by Christ to 
be perpetual in the outward form of it, and not simply a 
spiritual communion. He recalls the formula by which 
our Lord instituted the Supper, and repeats with emphasis 
His injunction, "This do in remembrance of Me." 2 Clear- 
ly then what Jesus said concerning the spiritual meaning 
of His words was not meant to supersede a service which 
He established with so much solemnity in the form of it. 
That were to spiritualize into nonentity. There are other 

1 Luke xxii. 19. 2 1 Cor. xi. 24. 



244 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

bodies of Christians, who while they keep up the observ- 
ance of the Lord's Supper, make this simply a memorial 
of the fact of His dying, and attach no sacrificial meaning 
to the death. These understand His reply to the Jews as 
refining the whole transaction of the cross into an heroic 
martyrdom for the truth, which was destined to exert a 
spiritual influence upon mankind, but had nothing of the 
sacramental or redemptive quality which belonged to the 
sacrifice under the Old Testament. This view takes the 
extreme point of opposition to the Eoman Catholic doc- 
trine of sacrifice, as the view of the Friends is at the 
extreme of opposition to form. 

These three views have points of analogy as well as of 
contrast. That of the Roman Catholic Church makes 
much of the form, because the purport of the sacrament 
is to transform the bread and wine into the body and 
blood of Christ. Opposed to this is the view which— to 
get rid of so gross a superstition — does away with the form 
altogether, and would trust the remembrance of Christ 
entirely to the heart without external signs, and would 
seek communion with Christ solely in and through the spirit. 

Again, the Roman Catholic view makes the sacrament a 
literal repetition of the sacrifice of Jesus upon the cross, 
and therefore holds up the consecrated wafer for adoration. 
Protesting against this idolatry, the third view mentioned 
goes to the extent of denying any sacrificial meaning to 
the sacrament, and keeps it up in form only as a memorial, 
just as one observes a birth-day festival, or any other form 
of commemoration. It is a memorial but not a symbol. 

Now each of these views results from pressing to an ex- 
treme particular words or phrases uttered by Christ, with- 
out regard to other expressions which have equal authority 
and significance, and which must be considered in making 
up a complete view of His doctrine of the sacrament. He 
did say, " Except ye eat of the flesh of the Son of Man 



THE LIFE IN THE WORDS. 245 

and drink His blood, ye have no life in you, for My flesh 
is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed ;" and 
directly after, He said, " It is the Spirit that quickeneth ; 
the flesh profiteth nothing ; the words that I speak unto 
you, they are spirit, and they are life." These two sayings 
qualify and interpret each other. The second does not 
annul the first by depriving it of all meaning ; Jesus did 
not intend by this, You must take my words entirely in a 
spiritual sense, and thus attach no significance to the terms 
flesh and blood. Why did He repeat these words so often, 
and with such solemnity of impression, if they were to be set 
aside as absolutely of no account ? What He said was, 
" There is a spiritual life in these words that I have 
spoken;" and therefore we should neither take them 
grossly as a literal eating of flesh and blood, nor set them 
aside for some refined spiritual conception which has no 
relation to such eating and drinking ; but we must get out 
of these very words the spiritual life that is in them ; these 
very words that speak of eating His flesh, and drinking 
His blood, are " spirit and life," when one takes them 
rightly. They teach that the Lord Jesus gave His flesh, 
His life for the life of the world ; His death was a sacrifice 
as the means of life and salvation. 1 But this sacrifice does 
not take effect for any individual from the mere fact of its 
having been offered ; it does not stand simply as an event 
of history, to exert a moral influence upon mankind : but 
it gives life to him who eats and drinks it ; — that is, to 
him who appropriates it to his own case as the provision 
upon which the life of his soul depends — -just as the life of 
the body depends upon food and drink. He who so re- 
ceives the death of Christ — makes this application of that 
death as the necessary means of his soul's life — will find 
that Christ becomes to him as his very flesh and blood. 
The death of Christ was a literal, physical event: there 

1 See Chan. V. 



246 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

is no doubting that fact, and the glorious truth of the re- 
surrection depends upon it. But this death did not come 
in the course of nature, nor merely as a consequence of nat- 
ural laws; neither was it simply an effect of human vio- 
lence : for Jesus laid down his life: l suffered Himself to 
be put to death; and in the discourse under review He 
said, "The bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will 
give for the life of the world." This made His death a 
sacrifice. He gave His life, and by that giving brought 
life to the world. But the practical benefit of the sacrifice 
can be had only by accepting it as a sacrifice in our stead; 
by appropriating it with a full heart as the means of life; 
and this it is to eat Christ, so that His life becomes ours. 
Hence the stress laid upon receiving the life of His sacri- 
fice. "The flesh profiteth nothing." It is of no avail to 
belong to the body of Christ — the church — unless the 
soul is a partaker of His life. There are benefits from 
church membership to one who is truly a disciple; but 
membership in the church gives no warrant of salvation, 
and will rather be a hindrance if made, in any wise, a sub- 
stitute for Christ. "He that eateth Me shall live by Me." 
Hence the virtue of the sacrament is found only in feeding 
upon Christ. It is not "he that eateth this material 
bread," but "he that eateth Me;" not eateth Me in the bread 
but who in the act of eating the bread brings Me home to his 
soul as his food, his life, his portion, his salvation. Hence 
the very essence of the sacrament consists in the doctrine 
of Christ that it embodies, and which through an expres- 
sive sign -language, it brings to the soul as its spiritual life. 
The Doctrine is the true Sacrament. 

If in coming to this sacrament we realize through it the 
nearness and the fulness of Christ, if we thereby receive 
afresh into our hearts His living truth and grace, then do 
we feed upon Him. As we speak of devouring a book 

1 John x. 15, 17, 18. 



CHRIST SATISFIES THE SOUL. 247 

whose thoughts please us, devouring the letter of a friend, 
devouring that friend himself in an extasy of love, so we 
take Christ into our hearts and feed upon Him and there- 
by receive new strength of spiritual life. 

Food and drink fill and satisfy. They make blood and 
tissue ; they sustain life, and fill our corporeal nature with 
the sense of satisfaction. So the doctrine of redemption 
embodied in the sacrament fills our souls with life from 
Christ. He is the life ; He gave Himself to be our life ; 
and so completely does His life enter into us by faith, that 
it becomes to us the eternal life, swallowing up death itself 
in the fulness of His resurrection. He who has ascended 
up where He was before — the living, reigning Son of Man — 
will lift us up to the same life and glory, if we will truly 
keep His sacraments. The words that He speaks unto us 
are Spirit and are Life. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE DOCTRINE OF CHEIST COMPLETE AS A REVELATION 
FROM GOD. 

" I HAVE given unto them the words which Thou 
gavest Me ; and they have received them, and have known 
surely that I came out from Thee, and they have believed 
that Thou didst send Me." l Such was the testimony of 
Christ to the source of His doctrine and to the quality of 
discipleship. " The Words which Thou gavest Me." So 
Jesus constantly affirmed that His teaching was an express 
communication from God, to be therefore received as hav- 
ing divine authority. He did not evolve from His own 
brain a system of doctrine, and after thirty years of re- 
flection in His quiet village home — in communion neither 
with books nor men, but with His own soul, with nature, 
and with God — announce this as a new theology for the 
world : but from the beginning of His teaching He said, 
" My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me." " If 
any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, 
whether it be of God, or whether I speak of Myself." 2 
While He spake only that which He Himself -knew to be 
the truth, this knowledge was not the mere conviction of 
logic, nor simply the intuition of His human conscious- 
ness, but " as My Father hath taught Me," He said, " I 
speak these things." 3 " I have not spoken of Myself, 
but the Father which sent Me, He gave Me a com- 
mandment, what I should say and what I should speak: 
and I know that His commandment is life everlasting : 

ijohnxvii. 8. 2 John vii. 17. 3 John viii. 28. 

248 



JESUS THE INFALLIBLE TKUTH. 249 

whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto 
Me, so I speak." * In thus claiming to speak the mind 
of God, Jesus asserted much more than the general ac- 
cordance of His teaching with divine truth — such an ac- 
cordance as might be shown by comparison and inference 
— He meant that He spake directly as the mouth of God ; 
not commissioned, merely, to deliver a message, nor in- 
spired to perceive and utter certain truths, but having such 
a union with God and such a knowledge of God, that the 
mind of God found expression through His words, the 
voice of God uttered itself through His lips. " The words 
that I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself; but the 
Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works. The 
word which ye hear is not Mine, but the Father's which 
sent Me." 2 " The peculiar import of His doctrine/ 7 says 
Neander, "consists in its relations to Himself as a part of 
His self-revelation, an image of His unoriginated and in- 
herent life. His power lay in the impression which His 
manifestation and life as the incarnate God produced; and 
this could never have been derived from without." 

What Jesus constantly declared to men concerning 
the source of His teachings,- He reaffirmed when sum- 
ming up His life in the solemn act of prayer to the 
Father. "I have manifested Thy Name unto the men 
whom Thou gavest Me out of the world: Thine they were, 
and Thou gavest them Me ; and they have kept Thy 
word. Now they have known that all things whatsoever 
Thou hast given Me are of Thee. For I have given unto 
them the words which Thou gavest Me ;" 3 and again, " I 
have given them Thy word" 4 What Jesus taught was 
the absolute, the infallible, the authoritative truth of God 
— this, and nothing short of this ; this, and nothing else 
than this. 

But the question here arises, How fully did Christ present 

1 John xii. 49. 2 John xiv. 10, 24. s John xvii. 6, 7. * John xvii. 14. 



250 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

the truth of God ? To what extent did He convey to men 
the truth that God would have them to know, for the 
right improvement of the present life, and for salvation in 
the life to come ? That He omitted to speak of many sub- 
jects concerning which we are curious and anxious to be 
informed, the heart knows too well which has gone to His 
word with troubled questionings about its future, only to 
meet there a new demand upon its faith. But was this 
omission of accident or of design ? Was it owing to some 
limitation upon His knowledge, or to the brevity of His 
life, or the lack of opportunity? or was it a purposed 
withholding according to the will of God ? Had Jesus 
lived say ten or twenty years longer, may we infer that 
He would have thought out some subjects more fully and 
have expanded these in His discourses ? or that occasion 
would have arisen for discoursing upon topics now left un- 
touched ? or that in any way He would have added to the 
sum and substance of the truth that He actually declared? 
In other words, did He die before He had communicated 
everything to mankind that the Father intended to reveal 
by Him when He brought His first-begotten into the 
world ? Would the prolongation of the life and ministry of 
Christ have afforded any solution of problems and mys- 
teries now left unsolved ? 

Take for instance three questions, — which perhaps more 
than any others have occupied the speculative theology of 
the Church, and tasked the- faith of individual believers. 

(a.) What is the nature of God and how stand the 
Father and the Son related to this nature in common ? 
Jesus coming from the bosom of the Father declared Him, 
" manifested " Him, and taught the oneness of the Father 
and the Son: — but the metaphysical conception of the 
divine essence and unity He never touched upon, nor 
would He have enlightened us in that direction had He 
continued to preach for thirty years. " All things," said 



THE SILENCE OF CHRIST. 251 

He, " are delivered unto Me of My Father ; and no man 
knoweth the Son, but the Father, neither knoweth any 
man the Father, save the Son, and He to whomsoever the 
Son will reveal Him." l But while Jesus did reveal the 
Father morally and spiritually, He gave no answer to the 
questions which metaphysical theology is evermore raising 
concerning the essence of God and the consubstantiality of 
the Son with the Father : and this because such questions 
did not lie within the purport of the mission for which 
God sent Him into the world. 

(6.) Take next the question of Christ's second coming — 
the time of it and the manner of His kingdom — questions 
which in every succeeding age have agitated the Church, 
and divided its faith. Such questions our Lord expressly 
declined to answer ; saying to His over-curious disciples, 
" It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which 
the Father hath put in His own power." 2 

(c) And once more, how reticent He was upon the 
whole class of questions that come thronging into the mind, 
in view of death and the hereafter — those exciting, perplex- 
ing, agonizing questions : Where is the spirit ? Does it 
yet know me ? Shall we meet, and know, and love again ? 
How naturally could all such questions have been an- 
swered by our Lord as He conversed of the death of Laza- 
rus, and when He stood by his grave ; but concerning the 
physical or metaphysical conditions of existence after death 
both His lips and the lips of Lazarus were sealed, while yet 
He proclaimed to the whole dying race of man, "lam 
the resurrection and the life — he that believeth in me, 
though he were dead, yet shall he live." 3 

The revelation of Christ then was not abbreviated by His 
opportunities, by His death, nor by any known limitation 
whatsoever. The Scriptural view of His mission gives no 
reason to suspect that He failed to communicate any part of 

i Matt. xi. 27. 2 Acts i. 7. 3 John xi. 25. 



252 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

that truth of God which it had seemed good in the sight of 
the Father should be revealed ; but on the contrary we are 
told that the Lord Jesus did make known all that the Father 
would communicate to mankind with respect to their salva- 
tion from ruin unto life eternal. The revelation was per- 
fected and completed in Him, and He could say, " all things 
that I have heard of my Father, I ha*ve made known unto 
you ;" and in His last prayer, Jesus, addressing His Father 
said, " I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to 
do." 1 

Prominent among the elements of His work was, pro- 
claiming the truth of God, and bringing men into the 
kingdom of God through allegiance to that Truth. This 
is the undertone of that wonderful prayer 2 in which our 
Lord uttered His own conception of His mission, and — in 
what He had accomplished for His disciples, and what He 
supplicated on their behalf — declared He had finished 
the work that His Father had given Him to do. He had 
come into the world that He might recover men to God ; — 
the work of reconciliation, as to the form of it, would be 
consummated by His death : — this He had foreshadowed 
in His discourse to His disciples, and this finishing stroke 
was about to be given to the life and doctrine of the Son 
of God. But while His death is present in His own 
thought as the finishing act by which the Son of man 
shall be glorified, and God shall be glorified in Him, that 
which Jesus makes prominent in His prayer is the doc- 
trine of divine love and restoration, by whose renovating 
and sanctifying power He had gathered and yet would gather 
His Church into a blissful oneness of life, in Himself and 
the Father. 

He had glorified the Father by bringing men out of the 
power of the world, sin and death, into that true spiritual 
life which shall be eternal ; but this He now defines to be — 

1 John xvii. 4. 2 John xvii. 



THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IS LIFE. 253 

knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ — knowing 
with that knowledge which makes its object real, and re- 
ceives it into the life as a possession and a power. This 
knowledge Jesus had imparted by manifesting the Father 
to His disciples; giving unto them the words that the 
Father had given Him; and the proof of the divine life in 
them was, that they had received this word of God and 
kept it. He prayed that they might be sanctified and per- 
fected through this same word of truth ; and closed His 
petition with the words, " O righteous Father the world 
hath not known Thee ; but I have known Thee, and these 
have known that Thou hast sent me : and I have declared 
unto them Thy name, and will declare it i that the love 
wherewith Thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in 
them." 

This declaring the truth from God in such wise as to 
bring men into a true life in the knowledge and the love 
of God, was so integral and vital in the work of Christ 
that He gave it to Pilate in evidence of His royal com- 
mission : " Art thou a King ?" — " To this end was I born, 
and for this cause came I into the world, that I should 
bear witness unto the truth ;" l and having set up the 
kingdom of truth in believing souls, to be perpetuated 
through their testimony, and by the power of the Holy 
Ghost, Jesus could say to His Father, " I have glorified 
Thee on the earth, I have finished the work which Thou 
gavest Me to do." 

The comprehensive completeness of the doctrine of 
Christ in all that concerns the restoration of man to God, 
his spiritual well-being and his eternal life, assures us 
that as the Son of God sent to give light to the world, He 
finished His work in His personal ministry upon earth. 
All that the apostles did afterwards, under the guidance 
of the Holy Spirit, all that the Church has since accom- 

1 John xviii. 37. 



254 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

plished through her teaching ministry and her schools of 
theology, has been simply in the way of interpreting, un- 
folding, and applying that which Jesus Christ Himself 
gave in its substance, and with a germinating power capa- 
ble of such expansion to the thought, and such application 
to the life of all after ages. " The teaching of Christ pre- 
sented seeds and stimulants of thought. It must, therefore, 
by no means surprise us to find that the full import of most 
of His words was not comprehended by His contempora- 
ries; such a result, indeed, was just what we might expect. 
He would not have been Son of God and Son of man, had 
not His words, like His works, with all their adaptation to 
the circumstances of the times, contained some things that 
were inexplicable ; had they not borne concealed within them 
the germ of an infinite development, reserved for future 
ages to unfold. It is this feature which distinguishes Christ 
from all other teachers of men. Advance as they may, they 
can never reach Him ; their only task need be, by taking 
Him more and more into their life and thought, to learn 
better how to bring forth the treasures that lie concealed in 
Him." 1 The study we have devoted to the doctrines 
of Christ, one by one, has prepared us to appreciate this, 
by now grouping these doctrines in various lights for a 
general survey of their range and bearing, their significance 
and moment, their thoroughness and depth, their practical 
scope and influence. 

How comprehensive was the doctrine of Christ in the 
range of topics which it embraced, and in the bearing of 
these upon the supreme end of His mission — the recovery 
of man to holiness. All intelligent beings of whose exist- 
ence we have any knowledge, or whose existence, had been 
shadowed in the creations of poetry and philosophy — 
wherever found in the peopled realms of space — were 
brought within the range of His doctrine, in their rela- 

1 Neander : Life of Jesus Christ, $ 65. 



THE VAST RANGE OF CHRIST'S DOCTRINE. 255 

tion to man's spiritual condition, whether of sin and its 
conflicts, or of salvation and its hopes. Man himself in 
his personal character, his condition, his wants, his desires, 
his aims, his temptations, his perils, his possibilities ; man 
in his relations to his fellows, to the community, to the 
race ; the angels as messengers of love, rejoicing over the 
returning prodigal, witnessing the confession of the peni- 
tent, representing little children before the face of God in 
heaven, bearing the child of God from want and wretched- 
ness here to Abraham's bosom, attending upon the solem- 
nities of the last judgment and welcoming the redeemed to 
the glory of the Father ; the devil and his angels cast out 
from heaven, infesting the earth to possess the bodies and 
the souls of men, and awaiting their malignant triumph in 
the condemned of the last day ; — God in His supremacy 
as Creator, Lord and Judge of all ; in the infinitude of 
His presence and the plenitude of His power ; in His spir- 
itual nature as the object of worship ; in His holiness to 
be revered, in His paternal bounty to be praised and loved ; 
in His gracious nearness as the hearer of prayer : in the 
habitation of His glory, prepared for the home of His 
children ; — God in the mysterious unfolding of Himself 
through the only begotten Son, and the Holy Comforter, 
while yet He retains the ineffable oneness of His being — 
this immense scale of existence from lowest to highest, and 
from worst to best, was all covered by the doctrine of 
Christ, bringing the whole moral universe into relations of 
good or evil with mankind. And as all beings, so too 
all worlds were brought within the compass of His doc-; 
trine ; — this world with all its creatures, as under God's 
providential care ; the world of spirits, subject to His con- 
trol ; the world of the dead, obedient to His voice ; and 
that yet more intangible, impenetrable sphere, where spirit- 
ual influences act upon the thoughts and the hearts of 
men, to enlighten and sanctify, or to delude and destroy. 



256 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

And as with all beings and all worlds, so with all 
periods of duration — these were brought into the doctrine 
of Christ so far as related to the main question of human 
redemption. The history of this world as a preparation 
for Him of whom Moses and the prophets did testify ; the 
unwritten history of that kingdom prepared before the 
foundation of the world, known to Him whose conscious- 
ness went back to the glory of the Father before the world 
was ; the coming ages to be illumined by His gospel, the 
nations to be made His disciples, the end of the world, the 
raising of the dead, the judgment, and the eternal state and 
destinies beyond, these all were brought in line within the 
doctrine of Christ. What other teacher — even though en- 
lightened by His guidance — has taken such a grasp upon 
all being, all time, all worlds, and gathering within His 
thought all things visible and invisible — heaven, earth, 
hades, hell, the eternity before the world was, the ages 
gone, the ages to come, and the eternity beyond — -has con- 
verged and concentrated all upon the focus of man's resto- 
ration to his true position in this vast circle of beings, 
powers, ages, worlds? 

The completeness of the Revelation in Christ appears 
also in the significance and moment of His doctrines. All 
truth is important to be known ; all knowledge has some 
value and use for its possessor ; and he who makes any 
discovery, settles any fact, establishes any principle, not 
only enriches himself, but is in some particular a bene- 
factor of mankind ; and the reward of discovering truth, 
the advantage of acquiring knowledge, is a stimulus to 
that application of the mental powers which is itself a 
benefit of no mean value. But were the question one of 
sending a messenger from heaven clothed with divine wis- 
dom and authority, to communicate to men a knowledge 
of truth as known absolutely to God, there would be a 
choice among truths, in respect both of subjects and the 



A REVELATION FOR HIGHER TRUTH. 257 

manner of imparting knowledge. Were one invited to an 
evening with a distinguished scholar, poet, artist, he would 
not care to hear him talk of the weather, of the Pacific 
Rail-road, the Cabinet, or the financial policy of the 
country, but would crave to hear from him something 
upon that which he knew so much better than any one 
else. One would not wish Plato to talk about the climate, 
nor Shakspeare about the crops, nor Raphael about the 
currency, nor would it be worth while an angel's coming 
to converse for an hour upon any problem of physical or 
mental science — the squaring of the circle or the law of 
the association of ideas. There are things of so much 
higher moment upon which he might enlighten us from a 
knowledge unattainable by man, that to occupy his dis- 
course with our human science and affairs were below the 
dignity of his mission. The value of truth is relative in 
respect to the subjects, the occasion, the opportunity ; and 
that which for the moment seems of absorbing interest^ 
may dwindle to nothingness in presence of some illus- 
trious person about to speak upon the highest themes. 
Suppose now the Son of God, having in full, clear vision, 
all truth, all knowledge, all wisdom, to have come into the 
world for the purpose of giving light to men : — of what 
should He speak? What themes, what doctrines and 
lessons, would be worthy of so stupendous a miracle, so 
ineffable a mystery as this divine incarnation? Should 
He speak of the destruction of that Roman Empire that 
then ruled the world? of the rising in after times of 
another empire whose victorious Caesar should sweep the 
fields of conquest from the Tagus to the Tiber, from the 
Rhine to the Moskwa? Should He announce the dis- 
covery of America, the invention of printing, the rail -way, 
the telegraph ? Should He lay down a science of govern- 
ment and of political economy for the regulation of human 
society, or a philosophy of the mind in respect to sensation, 



258 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

reflection, consciousness, intuition? But knowledge such 
as this, so important and useful in regard to earthly in- 
terests, was sure to come, in the progress of events, under 
the stimulus of necessity or the opportunity of research, 
bringing with it a healthful development of the race by 
the very act of investigation and discovery. 

There were questions deeper, broader, higher, for the so- 
lution of which the wisdom of ages was unequal, but which 
the Son of God could illumine with a word. With what 
feeling does God look upon man a sinner ? How can the 
just and holy God, offended in His justice and holiness by 
the impiety of men, be approached with hope of favor ? 
How can a man be just with God ? How rise to intercourse 
with the Father of his spirit ? How escape the condem- 
nation that he knows is over him, that he feels within 
him ? How find entrance to the paradise of purity, peace, 
and love which is still the dream and hope of a fallen 
world ? How meet death and that which is after death ? 

Questions such as these, of the restoring and perfecting 
of the soul that shall outlast all empires and all ages, were 
the questions to be answered when the Son of God stood 
face to face with a sinful dying world, to speak the words 
that had been given Him of the Father. And questions 
of such infinite moment filled the thought of Christ and 
imparted to His discourses a fulness of significance and 
value that can pertain to no wisdom of man. In the 
supreme matter of man's recovery to God, to holiness and 
heaven, no point is left untouched, no question unsolved. 

The completeness of Christ's teaching appears further, 
in the thoroughness and depth of His doctrines. He laid 
the axe at the root of the tree : He drove the plowshare 
down under the soil. He did not talk of the overturning 
of the Roman empire ; He overturned it by the principles 
which He set in motion against its oppressions, its vices, 
its crimes. He did not furnish a philosophy of social 



SUMMARY OF CHRIST'S WORDS. 259 

order; He reconstructed society by a few simple truths 
concerning the individual, the family, the neighbor, the 
state, the Church. He did not deliver a treatise on trade 
or political economy, but He gave rules that rendered in- 
justice, fraud, dishonesty impossible within His kingdom 
and disgraceful outside of it. What He taught took hold 
upon the innermost thoughts, feelings, passions, motives, 
imaginations of the human heart to work there a revolu- 
tion deep and radical. And His doctrines still confront 
the soul as a finality in respect to its character, its needs, 
its duties and its hopes. These words of Christ strike the 
soul with awe, for by them it shall be judged. Not all 
the volumes of moral science written since His days, not 
all the legislation of united Christendom, could weigh 
upon us with so much of authority as we feel in the few 
little sentences of the Sermon on the Mount. 

From the survey we have now taken, how comprehen- 
sive is the doctrine of Christ. The word of Christ is that 
God is a Spirit — to be worshipped therefore in spirit and 
in truth ; that He is holy — and therefore to be glorified by 
the fruits of holiness in the lives of men ; that He is a 
Father, and therefore to be approached with filial faith in 
prayer, to be acknowledged with filial gratitude in all the 
blessings of life, and to be trusted, with a filial confidence, 
under all trials and cares. 

The word of Christ is that the heart of man is sinful ; 
that out of it as from a fountain flow all corrupt and bitter 
streams ; that from it as a root proceed all evil and bitter 
fruits : and, therefore, that man must be born again, and 
made pure from within or he cannot see God. 

The word of Christ is that He was with the Father in 
His glory before the world was ; that He and the Father 
are one ; that by virtue of His original divine nature, He 
has all power in heaven and in earth, the power of life and 
of death, power to forgive' sins. The word of Christ is 



260 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

that this eternal Son of God, came into the world to seek 
and to save that which was lost ; — came, sent by the 
Father's love ; came^ not to condemn the world but that 
the world through Him might be saved. The word of 
Christ is that He draws men to Himself by being lifted up 
upon the cross ; that He gave His flesh, that is His life, 
for the life of the world ; that, like the corn of wheat, He 
must die in order that the fruit of His coming might ap- 
pear. 

The word of Christ is that He is the resurrection and 
the life ; and that whoso believeth on Him shall not perish 
but have everlasting life, and shall be raised up at the last 
day. The word of Christ is that He, the Son of Man, 
shall come again in the glory of the Father, to judge the 
world ; that He will raise the dead ; that He will separate 
the sheep from the goats ; that they who by faith have 
lived righteously, shall be blessed of His Father and wel- 
comed to His kingdom ; but they who have been un- 
believing and unrighteous shall go away into everlasting 
punishment. All this body of truth is the word of Christ. 

If we formulate Christ's teachings as doctrines ; we find 
here the doctrine of God's spiritual essence, of His abso- 
lute perfection, of His infinite love ; the doctrine of the 
divine personality of Christ Himself; the doctrine of 
man's sinful and lost condition : the doctrine of the re- 
demptive sacrifice of Jesus for the sin of the world ; the 
doctrine of the new birth or regeneration by the Holy 
Spirit, as indispensable to our admission into the kingdom 
of heaven ; the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, of 
the general judgment and of the awards of life and of 
death, alike final and eternal. All the great doctrines 
known in theology as the doctrines of grace, — doctrines 
that revolve around the central truth of man's deliverance 
from sin and death and hell through the sacrifice of the 
Son of God — the doctrines of sin and reconciliation, of re- 



pentance and faith, of pardon and salvation through the 
cross of Jesus, of regeneration and sanctification through 
the Spirit, of the resurrection of the dead and eternal judg- 
ment — these doctrines, stripped of technical phraseology 
and of human philosophy, are the word of Christ. 

The word of Christ is preceptive as well as doctrinal ; 
it is His word that we be humble and meek, merciful and 
pure, peaceable and holy, prayerful and charitable ; it is 
the word of Christ that we seek righteousness and the 
kingdom of God; it is the word of Christ that we love 
one another, and do good unto all men ; it is the word of 
Christ that we glorify our Father in heaven through the 
abounding fruits of righteousness. 

The word of Christ is a word of promise also. It is 
the word of Christ that He will send the Comforter to 
teach, enlighten, console, and sanctify us : it is the word 
of Christ that He and the Father will abide in the believ- 
ing, gentle, loving soul ; it is the word of Christ that in. 
the work of saving men through His gospel, He will be 
with us alway even to the end of the world ; it is the 
word of Christ that whatsoever we ask the Father in His 
name He will give it us : it is the word of Christ that 
. His peace shall be ours, and His joy shall be fulfilled in 
us ; it is the word of Christ that He will prepare a place 
for us in His Father's house, and will come again and re- 
ceive us to Himself. 

All that the Gospel contains for our instruction in right- 
eousness ; for our elevation in character ; for our consola- 
tion under trial ; for our hope in the future ; for our joy 
and peace on earth, and our final felicity in heaven, is the 
word of Christ. 

The completeness of the revelation by Christ appears in 
the practical scope and influence of His doctrines. In the 
vast range covered by His teachings, while these touch at 
intervals upon themes of thought the most abstruse and 



262 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

matters most remote from human experience, there is yet 
nothing mystical, nothing speculative, nothing for mere 
abstract contemplation; but every doctrine, whether con- 
cerning man, angels, God, this world or that to come, takes 
right hold upon human life and character, upon duty here 
and destiny hereafter. Beginning with the heart, the per- 
sonal soul, the individual life, the truth as Christ gave it 
works out into all the lines of human action, into all phases 
and conditions of society, into all business, all pleasure, all 
intercourse, all official place, all relationships, all plans 
and all obligations — past, present and to come. One can 
be nothing, do nothing, speak nothing, think nothing, to 
which this truth does not apply, with a commanding, a 
controlling power. 

It is this comprehensive completeness of Christ's teach- 
ing in the essential point of character, that makes Him 
indeed the Way, the Truth and the Life. As He came 
from God to lead us to God, and has pointed the way fully 
and clearly, nothing outside of Him can be the way. As 
He brought to us the words of the Father to light us up 
to God, there can be no truth proper or needful or useful 
for salvation, that is not embraced in His teachings. And 
as His light was the life of men, there can be no life apart 
from Him. To receive Christ as teacher is to receive Him 
in His fulness as the law of life, the way of salvation. 

" This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom 
He hath sent f 9 1 — this is the sum of faith and of duty. "I 
know not," says Schleiermacher, " where we can find any 
passage, even in the writings of the Apostles, which says so 
clearly and significantly, that all eternal life in men pro- 
ceeds from nothing else than faith in Christ." 

There can be no improvement upon Christianity as this 
was presented at the first by Christ. To say that theology, 
in the meaning of a human science of interpretation, and of 

1 John vi. 29. 



Christ's teaching for all ages. 263 

logical definition and construction applied to the doctrines 
of Christianity, can be improved, is only to say that human 
imperfection, which mars whatever it touches, attaches to 
any system that man can frame, even though the materials 
furnished him be perfect and divine. But when men 
speak of outgrowing Christianity, of finding a truth more 
perfect, a way more simple, a salvation more complete, 
they might as well talk of dispensing with sunlight by 
some new patent of science for consuming the oils, gases or 
metals of the earth. The very truths purporting to be in- 
tuitions of consciousness, that are brought forth to supplant 
Christianity, are either unconsciously derived from Chris- 
tianity, or find in it full recognition and confirmation. 
As the strokes of the hammer that bound to its bed the 
last link of the Pacific Rail-road rang clear and musical 
upon the telegraphic bells all over the continent, proclaim- 
ing the way opened from sea to sea, so the words of Jesus, 
proceeding from the central point of human history — 
where this world was linked once more to heaven — vibrate 
through the ages, in every clime and tongue, making mu- 
sical the soul that listens for their coming. The words 
that the beloved disciple caught and treasured for such as 
had not seen the Lord and yet had believed, were written 
for us also, that we might believe that Jesus is the 
Christ, the Son of God ; and that believing we might 
have life through His name. l 

* John xxL 31. 



APPENDIX I. 

THE GENUINENESS OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHCT. 

I. CHAEACTEEIST1CS OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 

The Theology of Christ is largely derived from the Fourth Gospel, 
commonly known as the Gospel of John. This Gospel has certain 
peculiarities that distinguish it in a marked manner from the other 
three, commonly called the Synoptics. In the duration it assigns to 
the ministry of Jesus, in the number of His recorded visits to Jeru- 
salem, in the date of the Last Supper, and in other minor points of 
detail, there are differences between the fourth Gospel and the 
Synoptics that have tasked the ingenuity of critics in arranging a 
harmony of the Gospels. These points are discussed at length in 
recent critical commentaries on John, and in learned and able mono- 
graphs upon the genuineness of the fourth Gospel, but they are only 
incidental to the line of inquiry pursued in this volume. 1 

A more important distinction between the Fourth Gospel and the 
Synoptics is found in the style and subjects of the teaching of Christ, 
and in the representation of His person and character. In the Syn- 
optics Jesus appears mainly as the Son of Man, who teaches moral 
truths and practical virtues by parables and sententious sayings. 
Even the sermon on the mount, though linked together by a subtile 
law of association and development, is a series of apothegms rather 
than a consecutive unfolding of doctrine. But in the Fourth Gospel, 
which opens with the doctrine of the Logos, Jesus appears more com- 
monlv as the Son of God, declaring and vindicating His Messiahship 
and His personal relations to the Father, and in extended discourses 

1 See Alford, Cam. on John; Meyer's K»m. uh»r das Evar,a. Je* Johanwn. 
De Wette's Kom. fiber das Evang. des Johannes. Weiss, Lehrb»ch der Bib. 
Theologie des JT. Testaments. Bleek's Einleitnng in das N. T. This standard 
work is now accessible in English, through Clark's "Foreign Theological 
Library;" it is distinguished by candor, learning and ability. Pe Groot, 
Basilides ah erster Zeuge fur alter nnd avtoritat NentestamevtHcher Schriften, 
inbesondere des Johannesevangelivms ; and the Essays of Prof. George P. 
Fisher, D. D. on the Supernatural Origin of Christianity. — To these Essavs. as 
well as to BV-pk's Einleitung, I have been specially indebted in preparing this 
Appendix. 

264 



VIEWS OF STRAUSS AND BAUR. 265 

and dialogues setting forth the deepest doctrines of the spiritual life. 
This last feature has given rise to the theory that the author of the« 
fourth Gospel was a Hellenic Christian, of the Alexandrine school, 
who constructed a fictitious life of Christ under the name of John, 
in order to give to his theological scheme the semblance of apostolical 
authority. A candid survey of the whole range of evidences, both 
internal and external, will, we think, show the falsity of this theory, 
and result in the conviction that the fourth Gospel was the work of 
the apostle John. 

II. THE VIEW OP STRAUSS. 

Strauss maintains that it is impossible to deduce the faith of Jesus 
from the fourth Gospel : — the tone of dogmatic assertion and of self- 
glorification in which Jesus there speaks of ITimself and His relations 
to the Father, is incompatible with the historical representation of 
His characfer given by the Synoptics, and must have proceeded from 
an enthusiastic and posthumous worshiper of Jesus, who put his own 
Gnostic conceptions of the " Word " into the mouth of his divinized 
Master. l 

From an examination of the external evidences relating to the first 
three Gospels, it results that, a little after the commencement of the 
second century, one finds certain traces, if not of their existence 
under their present form, at least of the existence of a great part of 
the materials that entered into their composition ; and moreover, the 
more ancient narratives had their origin in the very country which 
was the theater of the events which they recount. As to the fourth 
Gospel the results are far less favorable. This did not begin to be 
known until after the middle of the second century, and everything 
indicates that it had its origin in a foreign country, and under the 
influence of a philosophy unknown in the primitive Christian society. 
In the first three, in view of the interval of several generations 
between the events that they narrate and their definitive composition, 
the possibility of the addition of legendary and fabulous traits must 
be admitted ; in the fourth the alloy of philosophical speculation and 
meditative fiction is more than possible — it is probable. 2 

III. view OP BAUR. 

The strength of the negative criticism upon the fourth Gospel is 
concentrated in Dr. F. C. Baur, the acknowledged leader of the 
Ta i ;ingen School. Baur's conception is that the fundamental idea of 

1 Strauss Baa Leben Jesu (1864) g 33. 3 Leben Jesu (1864) § 13. 



266 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

this Gospel, in the mind of its author, was to portray the unbelief of 
the Jews, as the principle of darkness, opposing itself to the divine 
principle of light and of life, incarnate in Jesue; and that its plan is 
to follow out step by step the conflict of these two principles under 
the form of an historical drama. He assigns its composition to the 
epoch when Gnosticism and Montanism flourished, when the Church 
attempted to defend herself at once from these two extreme tendencies, 
and was agitated as to dogma, by the application of the idea of the 
word to the person of Christ, and as to discipline, by the question of 
the celebration of the Passover. Without any positive leanings, the 
Gospel concluded within itself all the contrasts of its time, in one 
central and higher conception, and hence was received with universal 
favor by all parties. It was written about A. D. 160-170. 

The author of this Gospel, strong in his own convictions, persuaded 
that he knew better than the primitive evangelists — who were still 
held in the prejudices of Judaism — the true spirit of Christianity and 
of Christ, with entire good faith modified the evangelistic history, 
accommodated it to the spirit of the time, and placed in the mouth of 
Jesus discourses that corresponded with the evolution of the Christian 
ideas ; and confident of having penetrated and revealed to the world 
the inner glory of Christ, he felt authorized, if not to declare it in 
express terms, at least to let it be understood with sufficient clearness, 
that he was the beloved disciple of Jesus. 1 

To sum up briefly the view of Baur, it is that "the fourth Gospel 
was not written with an historical aim, but in advocacy of certain 
doctrinal ideas ; and the writer made use of the Gospel tradition 
already before him, especially in the first three Gospels, in a very 
free and arbitrary way. The author, who was not certainly a Jew 
by birth, lived in Asia Minor, or more probably in Alexandria, in 
the second century, at a time when the Church was agitated and 
divided by conflicting parties, by the Gnostic controversies, by that 
concerning the doctrine of the Logos, by that concerning Easter, and 
by those of Montanism." 2 

IV. INTERNAL EVIDENCES. 

Both Strauss and Baur have admitted the clearness, consistency, 
and unity of the Fourth Gospel — that it is true to its own conception 

1 Krit. Untersuehungen uber die kanon. Evangelien 1847, and Theol. Jahr- 
bucher 1844, 1847, 1851, 1854. 

2 Condensed by Bleek. Int. § 63. 



INTERNAL MARKS OF GENUINENESS. 267 

of Jesus and His mission — though they deny that either its doctrines 
or its miracles could be imputed to the Jesus of the Synoptical Gos- 
pels. But this denial is in both instances based upon a dogmatic 
assumption. It is assumed that the " Son of Man," who appears in 
the Synoptics setting forth in simple parables the practical relations 
of the kingdom of God to this world, could not also have uttered the 
lofty and somewhat mystical doctrines of the Fourth Gospel concerning 
the Son of God. Not to dwell here upon the marked diversity of 
method often found in the same teacher — which will be considered 
under the head of " style " — this assumption is set aside by the 
simple fact that " declarations of Christ are recorded in the Synoptics 
perfectly corresponding with what we find in John concerning the 
divine dignity of the Son of God, and His relation to the Father.'' 
Thus Matthew and Luke declare the intimate union of the Son with 
the Father in language exactly parallel to the type of such declarations 
in John : "All things are delivered unto me of my Father; and no 
man knoweth the Son but the Father ; neither knoweth any man 
the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal 
Him." 1 In showing how David had called Him Lord. He declared 
His pre-eminence and His pre-existence. 2 In giving His last com- 
mission to His disciples, He asserted the plenitude of His power and 
the perpetuity of His being; and at the same time conjoined Himself 
with the Father, upon equal terms, in the formula of baptism. 3 Be- 
fore the Sanhedrim, in answer to the demand, " Tell us whether thou 
be the Christ, the Son of God," He acknowledged the title, and said 
"Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of' 
power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." 4 For this assertion of 
divine attributes He was charged with blasphemy and adjudged 
"guilty of death." The relation of His death to the life of the world 
was clearly announced in that saying, recorded by Matthew and Mark, 
"The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, 
and to give His life a ransom for many." 5 Thus the germs of the 
most important doctrines of Christology embodied in the Fourth 
Gospel are found in the Synoptics ; and that John, writing his Gospel 
at a later date, should have given greater prominence and amplitude 
to this class of Christ's sayings, was in accordance with that divine 
wisdom that evolves life in its highest organization from the simplest 
germ-cell. 

1 Mat. xi. 27, Luke x. 22, comp. John vi. 46 and x. 15. 2 Mat. xxii. 41. 
Mark xii. 35. Luke xx. 41. 3 Mat. xxviii. 18. 4 Mat. xxvi. 63, 64. 
5 Mat. xx. 28 : Mark x. 45. 



268 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

The objection to the genuineness of the fourth Gospel from the 
miracles that it records, brings into a question of pure criticism a 
foreign element of dogmatic speculation, and is well met by Bleek. 1 
" We must be content not to determine lor ourselves beforehand, ol 
d, priori, how far the influence of God's Spirit may extend, or how 
far not ; we must admit that it may operate not only on animate and 
human nature, but upon inanimate nature likewise. It is only self- 
deception to think that we can set up a barrier or line of demarca- 
tion, determining what miracles are possible and what impossible, or 
that it is by no means necessary to infer this from the character of 
the miracles themselves, trustworthily attested and recorded. It is 
quite unreasonable, on the ground merely that St. John's Gospel 
records miracles as wrought by Jesus, which do not come within our 
arbitrarily pre conceived notion of a possible miracle, to deny to it 
that trustworthiness and historical genuineness which it so evidently 
possesses in so many points. It is not unimportant to observe that 
the accounts given of miracles in the fourth Gospel are comparatively 
rare, and by no means so frequent as in the Synoptics ; and this 
should awaken in the minds of persons who so argue a pre judgment 
in favor of St. John. In those cases, moreover, wherein a compari- 
son can be instituted, the account given by St. John is much simpler 
than that in the Synoptics ; and bearing in mind the comparatively 
late composition of the Gospel, this tells all the more in favor of the 
opinion that the writer was himself an eye-witness and partici- 
pator." 2 

Robert Browning has well hit this nice balance in John's narrative 
between the faith that springs from love and the faith that comes 
only of miracles. 

" I fed the babe whether it would or no ; 

I bid the boy or feed himself or starve. 

I cried once, ' That ye may believe in Christ, 

Behold, this blind man shall receive his sight!' 
' Repeat that miracle and take my faith ?' 

I say, that miracle was duly wrought 

When, save for it, no faith was possible. 

So faith grew, making void more miracles 

Because too much : they would compel, not help. 

I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ 

Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 

1 Tntrod. % 79. 
2 See the account of the walking on the sea, John v. 15 ; Matt. xiv. 22 ; 
Mark vi. 45 ; and of the voice from heaven, John xii. 24. 



SOCEATES AND CHRIST COMPARED AS TEACHERS. 26£ 

All questions in the earth and out of it, 
And has so far advanced thee to be wise. l 

The perfect accord between the doctrines and the miracles — the 
word of Jesus and His works — in the fourth Gospel, and the natu- 
ralness with which they supplement each other, is an evidence of the 
historical character of the Gospel. 

The question of style in this Gospel as compared with the 
Synoptics need occasion no difficulty when we reflect how the same 
author or teacher may vary his style for different hearers or objects. 
The Synoptics testify that Jesus discoursed with His disciples in a 
style different from that which He used before the people. 2 " It is 
well known," says Bleek, "how widely the representations differ 
that are given us of the person and teaching of Socrates in Plato and 
Xenophon respectively. Some, supposing these irreconcilable, have 
held Xenophon's account only to be historically true, and have de- 
clared the Platonic Socrates to have been the creation of Plato him- 
self. The narrowness and erroneousness of this opinion is now 
acknowledged ; for if Socrates were a teacher only, as Xenophon de- 
scribes him, if he was not also the speculatist and philosopher that 
Plato describes, we could not explain how so many schools of specu- 
lative philosophy sprang from his teaching and influence. Both de- 
scriptions of Socrates are true, and are only different aspects of one 
and the same character. Now, if a wise man, who was merely 
human like Socrates, could thus present such manifoldness in unity 
that two of his pupils could give such contrasted yet true pictures 
of his teaching, surely the same is possible in the case of Christ — in 
the case of Him whose office and work was to be the Redeemer of 
men of all shades of character and life ; surely in His person and life 
there must necessarily have been a far richer fullness." 3 

The prevailing similarity of style in the discourses of Jesus and the 
narrative of the evangelist, may be accounted for quite naturally by 
the overmastering influence of the thought of Jesus upon the mind 
of the susceptible and loving John. Such unconscious influence, 
where there is neither imitation nor invention, is by no means un- 
common between master and disciple. 

Indeed, the reporting of an oral discourse may depend as much upon 
the receptivity of the hearer as upon the phraseology of the speaker. 

1 A Death, in the Desert — a fictitious representation of John vindicating lv'a 
gospel on his death-bed. 

2 Matt. xiii. 10., 34. Mark iv. 11, 33, 34. Luke viii. 10. 
» Introd. Z 76. 



270 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

Two reporters of different temperaments and different degrees of cul- 
ture may present quite different phases of the same speech ; each 
correct as far as it goes, each incomplete as an embodiment of the 
thought of the speaker, yet each important for the impression it will 
make upon its own circle of readers, while both are necessary to a 
philosophical estimate of the speaker and his discourse. John 
appears to have fed upon certain phases of Christ's doctrine till these 
not only possessed his soul as a personal faith, but pervaded his 
thought and style. 

" Let any only yield himself," says Neander, " to the impression 
of the Sermon on the Mount, and then ask himself whether it be 
probable that a mind of the loftiness, depth, and power which that 
discourse evinces, could have employed only one mode of teaching? 
A mind which swayed not only simple and practical souls, but also 
so profoundly speculative an intellect as that of Paul, could not but 
have scattered the elements of such a tendency from the very first. 
We cannot but infer, from the irresistible power which Christianity 
exerted upon minds so diversely constituted and cultivated, that the 
sources of that power lay combined in Him whose self-revelation was 
the origin of Christianity itself. Moreover, the other Go?pels are not 
wanting in apparently paradoxical expressions akin to the peculiar 
tone of John's Gospel, i. e. Let the dead bury their dead. Nor will 
the attentive observer find in John alone expressions of Christ in- 
tended to increase, instead of to remove, the offence which carnal 
minds took at His doctrine. 

" Still it is true, that such passages are given by John much more 
abundantly than the other Evangelists. But there is nothing in 
his Gospel purely metaphysical or impractical ; none of the spirit of 
the Alexandrian- Jewish theology ; but everywhere a direct bearing 
upon the inner life, the Divine communion which Christ came to 
establish. Its form would have been altogether different had it been 
composed, as some suppose in the second century, to support the 
Alexandrian doctrine of the Logos, as will be plain to any one who 
takes the trouble to compare it with the writings of that age that 
have come down to us. The discourses given in the first three Gospels 
mostly composed of separate maxims, precepts, and parables, all in 
the popular forms of speech, were better fitted to be handed down 
by tradition than the more profound discussions which have been 
recorded by the beloved disciple who hung with fond affection upon 
the lips of Jesus, treasured His revelations in a congenial mind, and. 
poured them forth to fill up the gaps of the popular narrative. And 
although it is true that the image of Christ given to us in this Gospel 



EXTERNAL PROOFS OF GENUINENESS. 271 

is the reflection of Christ's impression upon John's peculiar mind and 
feelings, it is to be remembered that these very peculiarities were 
obtained by his intercourse with, and vivid apprehension of, Christ 
himself. His susceptible nature appropriated Christ's life, and in- 
corporated it with His own.'' 1 

As to the names Son of Man and Son of God, Neander shows that 
Christ employed these antithetically : " they contain correlative ideas, 
and cannot be thoroughly understood apart from their reciprocal 
relation." 

The fourth Gospel exhibits throughout intrinsic evidences of being 
the production of an eye-witness. The minute yet unstudied descrip- 
tion of persons, places, events, the natural and life-like manner in 
which the story is told, are marks not only of the historical character of 
the narrative, but also of the interest of the writer in all that he nar- 
rates, as a matter of personal testimony. These characteristics are very 
striking in the account of the closing scenes of the life of Jesus : — the 
manner of the disciples when Jesus announced at the Supper that one 
of them should betray Him: the fact that John, being "known unto 
the high priest" went into his palace, while Peter remained without, 
until John came and brought him in ; the circumstantiality of the 
details about the weather, the fire, and what was transpiring in the 
judgment hall and in the outer court ; these are marks of personal 
recollection. The same characteristic appears in the account of the 
visit of Peter and John to the Sepulcher.* 

V. EXTEKNAL EVIDENCES. 

It is admitted by all parties, that before thfe close of the second 
century the fourth Gospel had come to be acknowledged as a canonical 
work, and was by many accepted as a work of the Apostle John. 
Irenseus, bishop of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian of pro- 
consular Africa, and Poly crates of Ephesus are conclusive witnesses 
to this fact. Irenaeus argues the necessity for four Gospels from the 
mystical analogy of the four divisions of the world, the foui winds, 
the four cherubims : 8 Clement speaks of " the four Gospels which 
have been handed down to us;"* Tertullian enumerates the four;* 
Polycrates names John as "he who leaned upon the bosom of the 
Lord." 6 These witnesses prove that in the last third of the second 
century the fourth Gospel was acknowledged in all the churches as 

* Life of Jeans Christ, Am. edition, § 71. 
2 Prof. Fisher has grouped together very effectively many passages in John's 
Gospel that exhibit "the air and manner of an eye-witness and participant in 
the scenes recorded." The Supernatural Origin of Christianity, pp. 84-95. 
8 Hcer. iii. 11. 4 Strom, iii. 13. & Mircion, ir. 2. e Evsebius, r. 24. 



272 THE THEOLOGY OF CHEIST. 

the work of the apostle John. Going back a step further in the 
literature of the primitive Church, we find conclusive evidence of the 
existence of the fourth Gospel in the first half of the second century. 
According to Hippolytus, Valentinus, the founder of a Gnostic sect, 
quoted from this Gospel as the saying of Christ, ,l All that came be- 
fore Me are thieves and robbers ;" 1 and also applied to Satan the 
title " Prince of this world." Marcion rejected the Gospel of John, 
as he also mutilated Luke's Gospel, because he thought it inconsisteni 
with the doctrines of Paul ; 2 but his rejection of it as not favoring 
his theological scheme, shows that it was already current m the 
Church as the work of the apostle John. 

We are indebted to Hippolytus for the resuscitation of another 
witness— Basilides 3 a Gnostic leader who flourished at Alexandria 
in tne fore part of the second century. In his discussions Basilides 
says, " Thus it is said in the Gospel ; This was the true light that 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world :" 4 and again, " The 
Saviour said, My hour is not yet come." 5 It is impossible to doubt 
that Basilides had before him the Gospel of John, and regarded it as 
of apostolical authority. 

A yet earlier and more important witness is Justin Martyr, who 
lived between A. D. 89 and 160. Justin speaks of the Gospels col- 
lectively as " the authoritative memoirs of the Apostles ; " he declares 
that Christ was "the only -begotten of the Father of all things, 
being properly begotten by Him as His Word and Power " — a con- 
ception apparently founded upon John ; and he uses the language of 
John's Gospel, with only such slight verbal variations as would 
occur in quotations from memor}^. In particular in his account of 
baptism, Justin says, 6 " For indeed Christ also said : ' Except ye be 
born again, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.' And 
that it is impossible for those who are once born to enter into their 
mother's womb, is plain to all." Such an approximation to the lan- 
guage of John can hardly be accounted for by a current tradition of 
Christ's conversation with Nicodemus ; and, moreover, such a tradi- 
tion would go to confirm the Gospel narrative as a history, for the 
Gospel reports with a matter-of-fact particularity the interview of 
the Master in Israel with the Teacher come from God. 

VI. CONCLUSION. 

The whole argument is well summed up in the following extracts 
from Bleek : 

1 Hippol. vi. 35. 2 Tertullian, arlv. Marcion iv. 3. » Hippol. vii. 22, 27. 
4 John i. 9. 5 John ii. 4. 6 Apol. i. 61. 



GENUINENESS OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 273 

" We have now to consider the design and occasion of this Gospel. 
The former John himself seems to tell us in his closing words. l 
What he here declares to be his object in writing, viz., to further 
faith in Jesus as the Christ and the Son of God, and everlasting life 
in those who believe, may, as thus generally stated, be regarded as 
the highest object of the other evangelists, and indeed of all Christian 
teachers whether writers or speakers. But it is one thing to awaken 
faith, another to confirm and guard it against error on all sides. 
Accordingly the authors of the Gospels might have different points 
of view, and give to their works a correspondingly different form. 
Their purpose might have been either the furtherance of faith in the 
Son of God — and this would influence them more or less in their 

selection of facts, and in the characteristic execution of their task 

or they might content themselves simply with the trustworthy re- 
lation of occurrences just as they happened. Among the Synopses, 
the latter character seems to belong more to Luke and Mark, the 
former more to Matthew. But unquestionably this former character 
belongs in a far higher degree to John, and certainly not simply 
through pointed references in him to the fulfilment of Old Testament 
expressions and in virtue of his own remarks and observations, but 
also through his selection of matter for record, especially such as the 
discourses of the Lord, which refers far more than those in the Syn- 
optics to the person of Jesus as the Son of God and the Messiah. 
More than any other of the evangelists might John have declared it 
to be Jthe simple purpose of his writing, that his readers might be- 
lieve Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of God. Still it would be a 
very great mistake to argue from this manifest intention in the Gos- 
pel against its historical reality and purpose, and to speak of it as 
purely dogmatic and apologetic, as has so often been done even by 
the latest interpreters and critics. So far is this from the truth, that 
if we may treat any one of our Gospels as an historical work, we may 
emphatically so treat the Gospel of John. In the statement of 
external facts, John is frequently more exact than the Synoptics. 
Not less is his account of events recorded by himself alone distin- 
guished by great precision and clearness, even when he gives promi- 
nence to what has manifestly no direct dogmatic significance ; e. g. 
the conversation with the Samaritan woman, the healing of the 
man born blind at Jerusalem, the raising of Lazarus, etc Espe- 
cially is the historical character of his Gospel proved by the clear- 
ness with which it unfolds, in its gradual development, the catas- 

18 1 John xx. 31. 



274 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

trophe which terminated in the death of Jesus the Redeemer. 
Here pre-eminently, from the very beginning of the Lord's public 
life onwards, care is taken to show how by His deeds and words the 
Jewish feeling concerning Him was formed, alternating for a long 
time between approval and dislike, until at last it took such a course 
as to give up even eagerly to crucifixion Him on whom but a short 
time before it had joyfully fixed its expectations. 

" The whole Gospel shows us how the popular opinion respecting 
Jesus was formed ; how, for a long time, it swung between approval 
and dislike ; how the people, entirely filled with the Jewish notions 
respecting the Messiah, sometimes thought He was the One for 
whom they were waiting, and then again became determined and 
bitter against Him ; how the Sanhedrim resolved to make away with 
Him, and how this resolution was affected by a real or pretended fear 
of the Romans. Especially is it from. John that we learn how it 
came to pass (a) that the people greeted Jesus on His entrance into 
Jerusalem with such rejoicings, (the fact itself is recorded by the 
Synoptics ; but it is only in this Gospel that we learn its motive, in 
the raising of Lazarus shortly before) ; and yet (b) that their feeling so 
quickly altered respecting Him, through the discourse following the 
entry, from which it could be seen how little He thought of being a 
Messiah m the Jewish sense of the word. This change of feeling is 
also related by the Synoptics, but not so as to show very clearly how 
it was brought about. 1 

" We need not be surprised at finding no quotations from St. 
John's Gospel in the apostolic fathers ; for they do not usually make 
any quotations from the Gospels, though they certainly must have 
known them. There are indeed some passages which seem indi- 
rectly to refer to sayings in our Gospel, but we cannot affirm this 

with certainty My conviction is that an unprejudiced 

consideration of the external testimonies leads to the certain conclu- 
sion that our fourth Gospel was recognized as a trustworthy author- 
ity, and a genuine work, in the various churches of Christendom 
■before the middle of the second century. 

" It must, as we have seen, have existed and been known in the 
church (a) before the Easter controversies; {b) before the appear- 
ance of the Valentinian Gnosis in Egypt and elsewhere; (c) before the 
rise of Montanism in Asia Minor ; (d) before the time of Marcion 
himself. The position which the contending parties in all these con- 
troversies allowed to our Gospel, can be historically explained only 

i Bleek, Int. \ 115. 



VAN OOSTERZEE'S NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. 275 

upon the supposition that it was known and recognized in the 
Church at large some decades of years before the middle of the second 
century, if not from the very beginning of it ; and this fact, in turn, 
can only be explained upon the supposition that it is a genuine and 
apostolic work. Whatever may be difficult and strange in the his- 
tory of this Gospel in the Church, in its contents or in its exposition, 
is only of such a nature as to become tenfold more difficult and more 
strange upon the supposition of a later and non-apostolic author- 
ship. Our investigation has confirmed us in the steadfast conviction, 
which is irresistibly urged upon us ever and anon from different con- 
siderations, that this fourth Gospel is really the work of St. John, the 
trusted and beloved disciple of the Lord" l 



APPENDIX II. 

DR. J. J. VAN OOSTERZEE'S THEOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

The most judicious and satisfactory treatise that has yet appeared 
in the recent science of Biblical Theology, is the Manual of the The- 
ology of the New Testament by Dr. Van Oosterzee, Professor m the 
University of Utrecht, Holland. This was first published in Dutch 
in 1867, and a second edition appeared in 1869. A German trans- 
lation, made under the author's sanction, was published at Barmen 
in 1868 ; 2 a full account of the work, with a translation of several 
sections appeared in the American Presbyterian Review for July, 
1870 ; 3 and a translation of the entire work is in course of publication 
in the Theological Eclectic. 4 This translation, by Prof. George E. 
Day, D. D., is made directly from the Dutch, and promises to be 
both precise and elegant ; when completed, it will be published as a 
distinct volume, and will form a useful text-book for Bible-classes. 

For convenience of reference I have here compiled from the Ger- 
man edition an abstract of that portion of Van Oosterzee's work 
which treats specificially of the Theology of Christ. 

1 Bleek, Intro. £ 89. 

2 Die Theologie des Wenen Testaments. Ein Hand-buch fiir academischo 
Vorlesungen und zum Selbst-studium. Von J. J. Van Osterzee. pp. 268. 

3 Vol. ii. New Series, pp. 434-459. * Published by Judd & White, New- 
Haven. 



276 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

Section first, in the form of an introduction, defines the Biblicai 
Theology of the New Testament as a science, carefully distinguishing 
it from Christian Dogmatics. The latter inquires, not only what the 
Christian Church in general or any one of its branches confesses as 
truth, but above all, what within the domain of Christian faith one 
really should or should not hold as truth. The former, on 
the contrary, asks only what is set forth as truth by the writers of 
the New Testament. From its point of view, it has to do, not with 
the correctness, but only with the import of the ideas which it finis 
in the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles. Elle ne d£montre pas, 
die raconte. As for the exegete, so for the Biblical theologian, the 
main question is, How readest thou ? 

| 2, treats of the history of this science, showing that it arose at a 
comparatively recent period — largely under the impulse of rational- 
istic investigation — and is "distinctively Protestant" in its origin and 
methods of inquiry, making the Bible its sole text-book and 
authority. 

| 3, points out the method to be pursued in this study. The The- 
ology of the Lord Jesus Christ must be distinguished from that of 
the Apostolic writers, and the former discussed before the latter. 
Here, too, the difference between the sayings of the Lord in the Syn- 
optics and in the fourth Gospel comes before us. The apostolic 
writings should receive a like discriminating treatment— bringing 
out in succession the theology of Peter, of Paul, and of John. And, 
moreover, since the doctrine of Christ and His apostles grew like a plant 
out of the soil of the Old Testament, as a preparation for understand- 
ing that doctrine, we must acquaint ourselves with the religion out 
of whioh Christianity sprang, with the expectations which it realized, . 
and with the condition, the ideas and the wants of the age in which 
Christ and His apostles lived. These points, Mosaism, Prophetism, 
and Judaism, as distinguished from the earlier Hebraism, Dr. 
Oosterzee groups together under the name of " Old Testament foun- 
dation.'' 

The treatise proper opens with a chapter on this " Old Testament 
Foundation/' under which I 4 treats of Mosaism— the religious-po- 
litical constitution 1 for which the people of Israel were indebted to 
Moses ; its foundation, a special revelation, its character monothe- 

1 " Die religios-politische Einrichtung ; " a constitution which did not simply 
combine within itself ecclesiastical and civil institutions, but in which the re- 
ligious idea was the key of the civil polity, and the whole political structure 
was based upon religious truths and erected for a religious end :— not " re- 
ligious and civil," but "religious-political." 



OLD TESTAMENT FOUNDATIONS OE CHEISTIANITY. 277 

istic, its form theocratic, its worship symbolico- typical, its tendency 
purely moral, its standpoint that of external authority — though at 
the same time it is thoroughly conscious that it is a preparation for 
a higher development. Blending the religious and the ethical, the 
Mosaic economy is founded not in legalism but in morality ; the ab- 
solute holiness of the king is the ideal of the subject ; the love of 
Jehovah is ever in the foreground, and religion is most intimately 
united with the life. Yet the law could not itself produce the 
holiness that it required. 

Prophetism, \ 5, which can as little be accounted for on the ration- 
alistic theory as on that of magic, was both the support and the ful- 
fillment of the earlier revelation. It built the way for the Gospel of 
the New Testament, exerted an important influence upon the matter 
and form of its preaching, and exalted its high worth above all reason- 
able doubt. It insisted upon the spiritual nature of the law and the 
necessity of spiritual consecration ; it proclaimed the universality of 
the kingdom of God, a golden age upon earth, and the resurrection 
and the judgment after death. By upholding Monotheism, by quick- 
ening and sharpening the sense of sin, and thus awakening the long- 
ing for redemption, by setting over against the terrors of the law the 
consolation of promise and hope, it prepared the way for the Gospel. 

Judaism, \ 6, describes the moral and religious state of the Israel- 
ites after the Babylonian captivity— a state of degeneracy from the 
original Hebraism, when speculation, legalism, and formalism had 
supplanted the early enthusiasm for spiritual truth. Although in 
this period there was a general expectation of the Messiah, yet there 
was nothing in Judaism from which the personal character of Christ 
or the matter of His Gospel could have been developed. 

Part Second brings us directly to the Theology of Jesus Christ :— 
the essence of the doctrine of God and divine things as given by 
Christ during His earthly life. While Jesus drew much from nature 
and from the Old Testament, His personality, more than anything 
else, was the source of His doctrine, and determined both the form 
and the matter of His teaching. The remainder of this chapter, 
from § 10 to § 17, is devoted to the conception of the Kingdom of 
God as found in the Synoptical Gospels. The several topics are, the 
kingdom itself, its founder, the King of kings, the subjects of the 
kingdom, salvation, the way of salvation, the consummation. 

I 10, on the Kingdom, has already been given in the note on p. 30. 
The founder of this kingdom Dr. van Oosterzee regards as none other . 



278 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

than Christ Himself, * who even in the Synoptical Gospels, appears 
as the Christ, the Son of the living God, and as such is not only a 
true and spotless man, but is also a partaker of a super-human 
nature and dignity which no creature in heaven or earth can lay 
claim to. At the same time, \ 12, He proclaims the Father as the 
Only true, the personally living and continually acting God, who re- 
veals Himself especially through the Son to men, and through the 
Holy Spirit produces in them every really gool thing. 

|" 13. Men only are the proper subjects of this kingdom — the holy 
angels being its servants, and the spirits of darkness its enemies. 
Christ teaches the personality of Satan, the Evil one, assumes the 
universality of sin in the hearts of men, and sets forth the guilt and 
ruin of the transgressor. 

$ 14. Salvation consists in the enjoyment of temporal and spiritual 
blessings, which begins here, and shall be perfected in the hereafter. 
The earthly appearing, the active life, the redemptive death and the 
heavenly glory of Jesus Christ, together had this distinct purpose — 
to bring this salvation to all. 

§ 15. Though all are invited to the salvation of the kingdom of 
God, yet sinners can partake of it only through repentance, faith, and 
a renewal of heart which manifests itself in the rectitude of the whole 
life. All who enter upon this way constitute together a spiritual 
community, which on account of its peculiar constitution, but above 
all on account ot its character and tendency is high above every 
other, and shall extend and endure till the end of the world. 

$ 16. Then shall come the consummation. The salvation of the 
subjects of the kingdom of God survives their death, but will first 
reach its consummation at the Advent of the Lord, at which the 
glory of the King shall be manifested, and those of His subjects who 
have been found faithful shall be rewarded with the full rewards of 
grace. This Advent will be ushered in by impressive signs, accom- 
panied with stupendous changes in the cosmical and moral spheres, 

1 That Christ did not really found the kingdom of God, but revived the 
normal conception of that kingdom in the Old Testament, and filled out the 
prophetic ideal, I have already shown at p. 31. This view of the original 
spirituality of the Old Testament kingdom is essential to a true understanding 
of the preaching of Christ. The apostasy of the Jews from their primitive 
Theocracy, and their glorification of the forms of the law in place of the spirit 
of allegiance, rendered necessary the removal of their system, in order to the 
re-establishment and glorification of the true Theocracy. " The kingdom of 
God " says Neander, "could not be founded from without. It needed first a 
proper material ; and this could not be found in human nature, estranged from 
God by sin." 



THE THEOLOGY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 279 

and followed by the definitive separation of the good and the bad 
which shall put an irrevocable end to the present state of things. 

Thus far the elements of the Theology of Christ as given in the 
Synoptical Gospels. His words in the fourth Gospel exhibit a char- 
acter so entirely peculiar, as to require a separate treatment. It is 
important also to distinguish as far as possible the utterances of the 
Johannean Christ from those of the Christian John. Here, in the 
words of Christ Himself, we move in quite another sphere of thought. 
In the Synoptics it is the kingdom of heaven that is prominent, 
here the King Himself; there, the human, here the divine side of the 
Person of the Redeemer; there, the blessedness of redemption beyond 
the grave, here, upon this side of the grave. This is the theme of 
\ 17, which op-ens the second part of the Theology of Christ. 

I 18, treats of the Son of God in the flesh The self consciousness 
which utters itself in the fourth Gospel is that of the onlv Son of God 
who appears as true and sinless man, to be the Messiah of Israel 
and the Saviour of the world, but who at the same time, during His 
stay on earth stands personally in a relation to heaven altogether 
peculiar. 

\ 19. As the Son of God the Lord declared that He was from 
eternity, was the constant object of the Jove of 'the Father, and the 
sharer of His nature, majesty and power, who had in the Father the 
ground and the end of His life, who revealed His name in the fullest 
degree, and by consequence could lay claim to a homage and dignity 
which could not be accorded to a creature without blasphemy 

I 20. The name of the Father was revealed by the Son to a world 
which through sin and the powers of evil was under the dominion of 
darkness, but which received from God in Christ new light and life. 
He imparted this light and life through His coming and all His 
works, but especially through His sufferings and death. Yet in 
order personally to enjoy their benefits, a heart-faith is indispensable, 
and this though required upon sufficient grounds, nevertheless for 
moral reasons will by no means be found in all. 

\ 21. They who are given to the Son by the Father, and by con- 
sequence have come to the Father through the Son, are united with 
the Son, and through Him with one another in a living Communion, 
whose peculiar character can be understood only by means of a 
spiritual experience, and whose benign effects are manifested in the 
whole course of their inner and outer life. 

| 22. That eternal life, which already here is a fruit of personal 
abiding fellowship with Christ, survives death and passes over into 
unending felicity. Also according to the Johannean Christ we must 



280 THE THEOLOGY OF CHRIST. 

look for a resurrection of the dead, a general judgment, and an 
irrevocable separation at the last day. The discussion of these rela- 
tions of the Son of God to the Father, to the world, to His Disciples, 
and to the Future, completes the second division of Van Oosterzee's 
treatise on the Theology of Christ. 

The third part considers the apparent differences between the 
Synoptics and John's Gospel, in their reports of Christ's teachings, 
as really conducting to a higher unity. His doctrine is communicated 
by the four evangelists in an harmonious many-sidedness, and is on 
the one hand the unfolding, amplification and fulfilment of the word 
of God spoken by Moses and the prophets, and on the other the foun- 
dation and starting point of a series of Apostolic declarations in re- 
spect to the way of salvation, which under various modifications, in 
turn embody, interpret and strengthen the doctrine of Christ. 

The Petrine, Pauline, and Johannean theologies are severally dis- 
cussed, and the work closes with a chapter upon the agreement of 
the apostles with one another, the agreement of the apostles with 
their Lord, and the agreement of Christ and His apostles with the 
writings of the Old Testament. 



INDEX OF TEXTS OF SCKIPTUEE. 



Page. 

Gen. ii. 7 178 

" 9 168 

" xvii.1-17 86 

Ex. xiii. 13 64 

" xxi.30 63 

" xxx. 12 63 

" " 16 63 

Lev. xxiv. 16 145 

" xxv. 24 63 

" " 52 63 

Num. xxi. 6 57 

" 7 58,60 

" " 8 57,58 

" xxiv. 6 166 

" xxxv. 31 63 

Deut. viii. 15 57 

1 Sam.xiv. 7. 86 

2 Sam. vii. 14 140 

" xii. 23 175 

2 Kings xxiii.10 282 

1 Chron. xxix. 18 86 

Ez. iv. 8 52 

" vi.ll 51 

" " 18 52 

" vii. 12 52 

«* " 26 52 

Neh. ii. 8 166 

Job xii. 3 86 

" xv. 12 86 

" xix. 26 183 

" xxx. 26 282 

Ps. ii. 6 140 

" " 7 140 

" viii. 6 217 

" xvi. 9 183 

Eccl. ii. 5 166 

" xii. 7 95 

Is. v. 20 282 

"viii. 22 282 

" ix. 2 282 

" x. 7 86 

" xvi. 24 282 

" xxxii. 4 86 

" xliv. 20 86 

" 1.10 282 

" li. 3 166 

" liii. 11 215 

" lxiii. 4 86 

Jer. vii. 31 282 

" " 32, 33 282 

" xxxi. 33 22 

" 34 22 

Ez. xviii. 30 235 

" xxxvi. 26 23 

" " 27 23 

il xxxvii 23 

Dan. ii. 4 52 

* vii. 27 , 131 



Page. 

Dan. vii. 28 52 

" xii. 2 183 

Mac. ii. 7 183 

" " 14 183 

" xii. 45 183 

Wisd. xvi. 2 235 

Matt. i. 20 150 

" ii. 13 281 

" iii. 2 41 

" " 6 41 

•« " 10 38 

" " 11 43,282 

" " 13 150 

" iv. 3 113,138 

" " 4 113 

" " 6.... 138 

" " 11 113 

" v. 3 43,84,85 

" " 8 25, 42, 43, 159 

" " 9 84 

" " 16 85 

" " 20 36 

" " 22 282 

" " 29 28.2 

" " 44 108 

" " 45 108 

" » 48 26 

" vi. 1-4 84 

" " 6 84,120 

" " 7 84 

" " 9 120 

" " 26 Ill 

" " 30 112 

" " 31 Ill, 112 

" " 32 : 112 

" " 33 112, 130 

" vii. 7 126 

" " 9 123 

" " 11 121 

" " 12 123 

" " 13 69, 223, 28t 

" " 14 69 

" " 16 90 

" " 17 83 

" " 19., 223 

" " 22 85, 224 

" " 23 85 

" " 28 6 

" " 29 6 

" viii. 12 223, 282, 283 

" " 29 138, 283 

" ix. 12 38 

" " 13 38 

" " 85 2 

" " 37 114 

" " 38 114 

" x. 5 55 

55 



<( u 



[The sixteen pages of Introductory matter are here added.] 



298 



INDEX OF TEXTS OF SCRIPTURE. 



Page. 

Matt. x. 7 2 

" " 22 282 

" " 28 223,281,282 

" " 32 220 

" " 33 220 

" " 39 281 

" xi. 1 2 

" •' 5 2 

" "2\ 2") 208 

" " 23 281 

" " 24 282 

" " 25 121 

" " 26 130 

" " 27 146,251,267 

" xii. 8 142 

" " 28 154 

" " 31 154 

" " 32 283 

" ■' 33 38,41 

" " 35 38 

" xii. 10 269 

" " 34 269 

" " 41 20G, 213, 233 

" " 42 206, 223 

" " 43 28,213,218 

" " 49 206 

" " 54 6 

" xiv. 22 268 

" " 33 14L 

" xv. 24 55 

" xvi. 18 2,280 

" li 19 2 

" " 21 53 

" u 26 224 

" " 27 224 

" xviii. 3 43 

" " 6 28? 

" " 8 223 

" " 11 63 

" " 19 97,123 

" xx. 18 53 

" " 28 267 

" xxi. 22 130 

" " 37 141,142 

" " 41 281 

" xxii. 7 281 

" " 22 7 

" " 30 187 

" " 33 7 

" " 37 26, 88 

" " 41 26,267 

" " 46 7 

" xxiii. 15 282 

' " 27 39 

" " 28 39 

" 33 223, 282 

" xxiv. 22 114, 282 

" " 30 204 

M " 36 „ 206 

" xxt. 1 224 

" " 19 204 

" " 31 199 

" " 32 204 

" " 33 207 

" " 34 208, 211. 215, 218, 220, 222 

" " 37 221 

" " 41 282,283 

" " 46 75,224,226,235,281 

" xxvi 29 212 

" " 39 121,130 

" " 62 281 

" " £-3 113 



Page. 

Matt. xxvi. 54 113 

" " 63 139,145,267 

" xxvii. 20 281 

" " 40 139 

" " 43 139 

" " 46 52 

" " 51 284 

" " 54 139 

" xxvii. 18 267 

" " 19 156 

" " 20 2 

Mark i. 14 2, 19 

" " 15 2,19 

" " 24 281 

" iii. 7 138 

" u 11 138 

" iv. 11 269- 

" " 33 269 

" " 38 281 

" vi. 45 268 

" vii. 21-J3 40 

" viii. 36 281 

" ix. 43 282,283 

" " 47 282 

" " 48 283 

" x. 15 28 

" " 24 28 

" " 26 282 

" " 45 62,267 

" xi. 22 126 

" " 25 126 

" " 27 251 

" xii. 25 282 

" " 35 267 

" " 36 150 

" xiii. 11 151 

" " 32 142 

" xiv 21 282,283 

" xv. 39 139 

" " 43 24 

" xvi. 16 53,69,70 

" " 17 153 

Luke i. 35 150 

" " 76-79 24 

" ii. 25-33 24 

" iii. 21 l. r 

" " 22 150 

" iv. 3 138 

" " 4 151 

" " 9 138 

" " 16 5 

" " 22 5,6 

" " 32 6 

" " 41 138 

" vi. 35 219 

" " 45 83 

" viii. 10 269 

" " 28 138 

" ix. 2 19 

" " 62 29 

" x. 12 206,282 

" « 22 267 

" xi. 5-9 126 

" " 20.. . v 26 

» " 21 26 

" " 22 26 

" " 39 41 

" xii. 6 112 

« » 7 112 

" " 14 198 

" " 23 205 

" « 47 229 



INDEX OF TEXTS OF SCKIPTURE. 



299 



Page. 

Luke xiii, 23 127, 130 

2 39 

3 39, 281 

" 4 40 

" " 23 282 

« " 24 69 

" 25 213 

" " 30 213 

" xvi. 13 42 

" " 19-31 281 

23 223 

" xvii. 2 282 

' " " 20 25 

21 25 

" 27 281 

" " 29 281 

" xviii. 1-9 126 

" xx. 36 211 

38 171 

41 267 

" xxi. 34 206 

« xxh. 19 212, 243 

" xxiii. 34 121 

42 161 

43 161, 281 

" xxiv. 15-22 281 

" " 39 95 

47 2 

John i. 9 272 

15 140 

" " 18 140 

" " 32 150 

« 34 140 

49 136 

" ii. 4 272 

" iii. 3 32 

4 33 

8 44 

« « 12 45 

" " 14 50, 51, 219 

" 15 50, 53, 62, 67, 219 

« " 16 49,67,141 

" 17 67, 77, 198 

" 18 62, 76, 201, 222 

19 73, 200 

20 73 

" iv. 2 1 

14 14 

" " 21 95 

23 93, 94 

" 24 93 

" v. 15 268 

18 143 

" " 19 146 

" " 21 180, 190 

« 22 207 

24 67, 198 

" " 25 141, 187 

26 141, 190 

" 27 198, 199, 205 

" 28 205, 224 

" " 29 205 

« " 40 73 

vi. 32 237 

33 237 

" " 34 88 

" " 35 237 

" 37 69, 70, 77 

" " 38 88 

" 39 70 

" 40 69. 188 

44 70, 189 

19 



Page. 
John vi. 46 267 

47 53, 211 

" " 51 62, 237, 238 

" " 52 238 

" " 53 238 

" " 57 238 

" " 58 211 

60 238 

" " 62 238 

" " 63 237 

" 68 5, 7, 18 

" 69 7, 18, 141 

70 25 

" vii. 17 248 

46 6 

" " 50 S3 

" viii. 21 208 

" " 24 53, 208 

" " 28 50, 52, 248 

" 37 52 

" " 44 40, 218 

" ix. 35 140 

" " 36 140 

" " 39 202 

41 202 

" x. 11 62 

" " 15 246, 267 

" " 17 246 

" " 18 246 

" " 22 144 

" " 24 143 

25 143 

" " 30 146 

" " 35 151 

" xi. 4 K'. 

" " 23 180 

" « 25 11, 179, 180, 193, 251 

" " 26 194 

27 141 

" xii. 23 5f 

" " 24 51, 56, 268 

" " 27 56, 121 

" " 28 121 

" " 31 56 

" " 32 50, 55 

" " 47 198 

« " 48 202 

" " 49 249 

" xiv. 1-4 212 

" " 2 171 

" " 3 171, 216 

" " 6 133, 219 

" " 9 1*7,209 

" " 10 „„ 18, 249 

" " 13 127 

" " 16 2, 150 

17 156 

" 21 27, 218 

" 23 26, 147 

" 24 249 

" 26 150,152 

" xv. 7 127 

11 27 

19 197 

" 22 201 

" " 24 202 

26 152 

" xvi. 7 150 

" " 8 44 

" 13 44, 151 

" " 14 152 

" " 16 154 



300 



INDEX OF TEXTS OF SCRIPTURE. 



John xvi. 



Page. 

154 

218 

158 

.2, 121, 252 



252 

147 

249 

249 

248 

216 

.197 249 



« 


37. 


xviii. 


27. 




7 




10. 


;" 


11. 


a 


39. 


XX. 


22. 


" 


:X 



17 44,152 

22 218 

23 29,216 

24 171,216 

2 

253 

145 

113 

113 

33 

150 

148 



Page. 

John xx. 31 273 

Acts i. 5 150,153 

" " 6 154 

" " 7 45,251 

" " 8 150 

" iv. 21 235 

" xx. 38 179 

ICor. ii. 2 4 

" vi. 13 178 

" " 19 178 

" xv. 24 174 

2 Cor. v. 1-5 172 

" xi. 24 243 

" xii. 4 165,170,284 

Eph. iv. 8 28t 

• ol. ii. 15 284 

Heb. x. 19 285 

lThess. iv. 16 175 

" 17 175 

IPet. iii. 19 284 

" iv. 6 284 

Uohniv. 18 235 

Rev. ii. 7 170 

" ii. 17 165 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 



ABSOLUTE belief in the, 90, 120. 

JESCHYLUS on Resurrection, 181. 

/ESTHETIC the in worship, 100. - 

Atoivio? eternal, 236. 

'Avaorao-is meaning of in Classic Greek, 180; in the Septuagint, 183. A« 
taught by Christ, 184. 

ANTHROPOLOGY of Christ, 10. 

ARISTOTLE, theology of, 80. 

ATHEISM denies Providence, 115. 

BAPTISM, significance of, 1, 43. 

BAUR on John's gospel, 265. 

BELIEVERS exempt from death, 194; their union with Christ, 171, 217. 

BIRTH, the new, 30 j Nicodemus on, 33, 35. Phrase of the Rabbis, 34. A 
spiritual renewal, 35. Men desire a new life, 37. New birth neces- 
sitated by sin, 38. Yet is more than repenting, 42. From above, 
43. No greater mystery than the wind, 46. 

BLASPHEMY, Christ charged with, 143. 

BLESSEDNESS of Saints, 211. Of Heaven, 212. 

BLEEK on the genuineness of John's Gospel, 273. 

BODY, Christianity cares for the, 178. Resurrection of the, 178, 184. Taught 
by Egyptians and Persians, 182. Belief among the Jews, 183-186. 
Basis of identity, 187. The intermediate, 285. 

"BORN AGAIN," see BIRTH. 

BROWNING, 268. 

BUCKLE, Theory of, 106. 

BUDDHISTS, 84, 107. 

CiESAR, tribute to, 7; triumphs of Roman and French, 257. 

CATACOMBS, Church in the, 175. 

CERTAINTY and Freedom harmonized, 116. 

CHALDEE, influence of, on New Testament, 52, 184. 

CHRIST a Preacher, 1. His doctrines, 2, 4 ; and Socrates compared, 3, 269. 
Quality of His Preaching, 6, 18. Brevity, 8. Simplicity, 9, 12. 
Matter of, 9. Manner of, II. Its depth, 11. Clearness, 12. Full- 
ness, 249. Presence of Christ is the Kingdom, 27. " Lifted up," 
50. Virtue of His death, 53. His rule of Life, 88. Love of Na- 
ture, 101. One with Father, 133, 146. The Son of God, 136. 
Preached Himself, 134, 265. Silence of, 1 60, 250. Judge, 199. As 
Man, 207. Presence in Heaven, 216, 219. 

CHRISTIANITY, literature of, 15. For universal diffusion, 102. A finality 
in Religion, 196. 

CHRISTIANS, Faith of primitive, 175. 

CHURCH, a symbol of the kingdom, 29. Founded on Christ, 46. Holy 
Spirit dwells in, 154. In the Catacombs, 175. 

CICERO, orations of, 8, 12. 

COMFORTER, 150. 

COMMUNION of Saint Jerome, 173. Of the Saints, 212. 

301 



302 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 

COMTE, Philosophy of, 107. 

CONDEMNATION, danger of, 50. Present, 200. Final, 200. Deliverance 
from, 200. 

CONDITIONS of Prayer, 130. Of Salvation, 219. 

CONFESSING- Christ, 220. 

CONFUCIUS, His doctrine of piety, 101. 

DANTE, 164, 173, 177, 234. 

DEAD, Resurrection of the, 178. 

DEATH, Christ's necessary to salvation, 54. For the whole world, 56. Pre- 
determined, 57. A ransom, 63, 65, 67. Destroyed for believers, 194. 

DELITZSCH, on the Intermediate state, 284; on Biblical psychology, 285. 

DEMOSTHENES, orations of, 8, 12. 

DEVELOPMENT, doctrine of, 17. 

DICKENS, works of, 8; testimony to Christianity, 16. 

DIVINITY, Christ's not at first declared, 137. Claimed in the title Son of God, 
145. In His self-consciousness, 147. Of Holy Spirit, 155. 

DOCTRINE, need of, 4. Christ's doctrine of God, 9, 12-14. Of Man, 10. 
Of the resurrection, 11. Power of Christ's in Society, 16. Upon 
the heart, 17. • 

DORE, 234. 

DRAWING- of the Father, 71, 72, 74. 

EGYPTIAN doctrine of Immortality, II, 164. Of Resurrection, 182. 

ESSENES, 82. 

ETERNAL PUNISHMENT, 236. 

EWALD. history of Israel, 20, 60. 

EZEKIEL, his spiritual kingdom, 25. 

FAITH, preached by Christ, 28, 53. A looking, 59, 62. Its obligation, 70. 

Its necessity, 75, 76. Its relation to works, 88, 90. Of primitive 

Christians, 175. 
FATALISM denies Providence, 115. 
FATHER, drawing of, 71, 72, 74. God as, 97, 110, 112. Prayer to the, 120, 

122. A living spirit, 121. Christ one with, 133, 146. Father in 

Heaven, 218. 
FATHERS CHUftCH, doctrine of Paradise, 162. Testimony to John's Gos- 
pel, 271. 
FREEDOM and Certainty harmonized, 116, see WILL. 
FRUITS good, 90, 221. Christianity tested by, 91. 
FUTURE STATE, Punishment, 222. Christ's doctrine of, 231. 
G-HOST HOLY, see Holy Spirit. 
GNOSTICISM in John's Gospel, 265. 
GOD, kingdom of, 19. Its consummation, 213. A Father, 97, 110, 112. A 

personal spirit, 94. Answers prayer, 127. The Son of, 136, seq. 
GOSPEL, as Christ preached it, 19. 
GOSPEL OF JOHN, 68. Characteristics of, 264. Strauss and Baur on, 265. 

Internal evidences of genuineness, 266. External do., 271. Bleek 

on, 273. Theology of, 279. 
GOSPELS, inspiration of, 159. The Synoptical, 264. 
GRANT, General, 105, 216. 

HADES, 164, 196, 280. Christ's visit to, 284. Bronzino's Picture of, 284. 
HEART, wickedness of, 38, 40, 83. Treasure of, 85. The Heart defined, 86. 
HOLY SPIRIT, The, 150. Revealer of Truth, 150. Source of miracles, 153. 

Abides in the Church, 154. A divine person, 156. 
HOMER, « Resurrection " in the Iliad, 181. 
IMMORTALITY, belief in, among the Egyptians, 11. 164; among the Jews, 

163 ; as taught by Christ, 171. 
INCARNATION of Christ, 208. 
INFALLIBLE. Jesus the infallible Truth, 249. 
INSPIRATION of Gospels, 157. 
INTERMEDIATE state, 161, 284. Delitzsch on the, 284. Lange, 285. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 303 

JEREMIAH, his spiritual prophecies, 21. 

JOHN, see GOSPEL of. 

JUDAI3M, 277. 

JUDGMENT, 198. Public, 199. At death, 203. Universal, 201. Formal, 
206. Final, 207. 

KINGDOM OF GOD, in Old Testament, 19. A spiritual redemption, 20. 
Described by Jeremiah, 21. A kingdom within Israel, 22. Devel- 
oped by Christ, 23. Laws of purity and love, 25. Privileges of 
the kingdom, 26. Its rewards and joys, 27. Must be entered by 
faith, 28. Van Oosterzee's views of, 30, 31. Consummation of 
kingdom, 213. In the hereafter, 217. 

KdAao-is, meaning in classic writers, 235. In the Scriptures, 235. 

LAW in Nature, 224, 227. Moral, 229, 231. 

LANGE, on the intermediate state, 285. 

LAZARUS, resurrection of, 185, 191. 

LIFE, a new, desired by all, 37. The new, in Heaven, 214. Everlasting, 179;, 
221. The knowledge of God, 253. 

LUTHER, 102. 

Avrpov, meaning of, 63. 

MAN, his sinfulness, 38, '83. Longs for God, 98. Dignity of his nature, 99, 
A spiritual power, 131. ''Son of, " 199. Subject of moral law, 
229 231. 

MATERIALISM, 4. 

MICHAEL ANGELO, 234. 

MILTON, 234. 

MIRACLES, from the Holy Ghost, 153. In John's Gospel, 268. 

MO 3AISM, 276. 

MOSES, the brazen serpent, 57, seq. 67. 

NAPOLEON, 131, 257. 

NATHAN AEL, 137, 140. 

NATURE, worship of, 101. Christ's love of, 101. Course of, 108, 114, 128. 
Judgment in, 200. Laws of, 224, 227. Penalties in, 224, 226. 

NEANDER, 240, 241, 25 4, 270. 

NICODEMUS, 32, 34, 36, 44, 49, 54, 68, 140. 

NITZSCH, 174. 

ODIC force the, 129. 

PACIFIC RAILROAD, 257, 263. 

PANTHEISM denies Providence 115. 

PARADISE, 160. Not identical with Heaven, 161. Early fathers on, 162. 
Reformers on, 162. Dante's, 164. Sanscrit derivation of the word, 
165. Septuagint. 166. Rabbis, 167. Christ's meaning, 168. The 
primitive, 168. Paradise defined, 169. 

PAUL, conversion of, 45. In prison, 102. In Paradise, 170. 

PERICLES, eloquence of, 7. 

PHARISEES, 59, 1 4, 223. 

PHILO, doctrine of Angels 95. 

PLATO, 2, 14, 80, 257, 269. 

POSITIVISM, 107. 

PRAYER, 119. An instinct of the soul, 119. Schleiermacher's definition, 119. 
Warranted by Providence, 120, 123. The address of the soul to 
its Father, 120. Christ's manner in, 121. For physical necessities, 
123. Has positive influence with God, 124. Perseverance in 
prayer, 126. Prof. Tyndall's objection 128. Conditions of, 130. 
Power of prayer, 131. 

PREACHING Christ. 4, 6. Need of doctrinal, 4. Christ's own, 2. At 
Nazareth 6. Effects of,6, 15, 18. Its brevity, 8. Simplicity of, 9, 
12. Matter of, 9. Manner of, 11. Its depth, 11. Clearness, 12. 
Grandeur of its range, 255. Summary of His doctrine, 253. 

PRESENCE, Christ's in the soul, 27. In Heaven, 216. The -'Real/' 242, 246. 

PROGRESS, friends of, 100. Proves Providence, 106. * " 



304 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 

PROPHETISM, 277. 

PROVIDENCE, 104. Irreconcilable with Positivism, 108. In the "course 
of Nature," 108, 115. Universal, and particular, 111. Direct in- 
tervention of, or "special," 113. And free-will, 115. General laws, 
116. Warrants Prayer, 123. 

PSYCHOLOGY of the Bible, 172. Delitzsch on the, 284. 

PUNISHMENT, Future, 222. Positive and personal, 230. Christ's doctrine 
of, 231. Eternal, 233. Weiss on, 280. 

RANSOM, Christ's death a, 63. 

RAPHAEL, 257. 

RATIONALISM, 4, 81. 

REASON AND RELIGION, 91, 114, 117, 200. 

REDEEMER, Jehovah a, 20, 22, 23, 41. Jesus a, 28, 65, 194. 

REDEMPTION, not arbitrary, 70. Grandeur of, 176, and Resurrection, 195, 
and Heaven, 219. 

RELIGION, nature of, 79. An Instinct of man, 79. Types of before Christ, 
79, 82. In the heart, 83. Must be spiritual, 84. A holy prin- 
ciple, 86. An elective principle, 89. Rational, 91 

REPENTANCE, required for entering the kingdom of God, 28, 41. Mean- 
ing of, 42, 73. 

RESURRECTION, 178. Egyptian belief in, 182. Persian notion of, 18fc. 
Apocryphal doctrine of, 183. Jewish belief in, 183-186. Of Laz>- 
rus, 185, 190. Of Christ, 188, 192. Jesus, the Resurrection, 190, 
192. None fop the wicked, 283. 

RETRIBUTION, in Nature, 225. In Society, 228, 233. Christ's doctrine 
of, 225. Justice of, 227. 

REVELATION in the Theocracy, 20 ; Complete in Christ, 248, 250, 256. 

RITUALISM, 4, 91, 100. 

SACRAMENT, of the supper, 211. In the doctrine, 237. Neander on the, 
240. Council of Trent, 241. Moehler, 242. Friends' view of, 
243. Appointed by Christ, 243, 245. Virtue of the, 246, 

SADDUCEES, Christ's answers to, 7, 186. 

SAINTS, blessedness of, 211. Union with Christ, 217. 

SALVATION, how made possible, 49. Provided for all, 67, 69. No limita- 
tion in plan, 69. Limited by unbelief, 76. Free to all, 71. Not 
universal in fact, 75. 

SAUL, conversion of, 45. 

SCHLEIERMACIIER, 119. 

SCOTT, SIR WALTER, works of, 8. Testimony to the Bible, 16. 

SCRIBES, 39. ^ 

SEPTUAGINT, 63, 166, 183. 

SERPENTS, in the wilderness, 57. The brazen, 58. 

SHAKESPEARE, 257. 

SIN, universality of, 38-40. Requires the " New Birth," 38. Proceeds from 
the heart, 40, 83. 

SILENCE of Christ, 160, 250. 

SLAVERY, Horrors of, 104. Destruction of, 105. 

SMITH, Sidney, 124. 

SOCRATES, compared wUh Christ, 3, 14, 269. 

SOJOURNER TRUTH, 104, 117. 

SON OF GOD, 136-145. A title of Divinity, 145. 

SON of MAN, 199, 207. 

SPIRIT, Nature of, 94. God a, 94. Triumph of, 196. 

SPIRIT HOLY, see HOLY SPIRIT. 

STATE, intermediate, 162. 

STRAUSS on John's Gospel, 265. 

SUPPER, the Lords, 211, 240-247. 

SWEDENBORG, 194. 

SYMBOL, the Brazen Serpent, 5*8. Healing by the sign, 61. Christ's use of, 
242. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 305 

TAULER, 102. 

TENNYSON, 160. 

THEOCRACY, Spiritual, 87. See, KINGDOM OF GOD. 

THEOLOGY, the Christian and the dogmatic contrasted, 3. Christ's our Sac- 
rament, 237. Christ's doctrine complete, 248. Neander on, 254. 
Vast range of Christ's, 254. Of John's Gospel, 279. 

THERAPEUM, 82. 

THIBET, prayer-cylinder, 84. 

THOMAS, Confession of 148. 

TINTORETTO, 234. 

TRANSUBSTANTIATION, 241. 

TRUTH, "Sojourner," 104, 117. Revealed by the Spirit, 153. As Judge, 201. 

TUBINGEN SCHOOL, 265. 

TYNDALL, PROP., his objection to prayer, 128. 

VAN OOSTERZEE, Theology of the New Testament, 30, 275. 

WARNINGS of Christ, 223. 

WEISS on Future Punishment, 280. 

WILL, free, 74, 89, 15, 123. 

WINE, the new, 214. 

WORKS, good, 88, 90, 221. 

WORSHIP, spiritual, 93. Must be addressed to God, 95. 

Outward, its uses, 96. The aesthetic, 100. Sentimental, 101. 

WORSHIPPERS, the true, 102. 

XENOPHON, 165. 



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